


by the world forgot

by galacticAcolyte (coffee_goth)



Category: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Homestuck
Genre: Dubious Medical Procedures, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind AU, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Memory Erasure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:08:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffee_goth/pseuds/galacticAcolyte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“And who are you here to erase?”<br/>Erase. She’ll be gone forever. Like the past two years of his life never existed. He won’t even know her name.<br/>He clears his throat. “Her name, her name’s Aradia. Aradia Megido.”</p><p>you can try to erase someone from your mind, but getting them out of your life is another story. an eternal sunshine of the spotless mind au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue: the new year

**Author's Note:**

> watching eternal sunshine is not necessary to read and understand this fic.
> 
> "How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!  
> The world forgetting by the world forgot  
> Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind  
> Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd"
> 
> \- Alexander Pope

_so this is the new year_

_and i have no resolutions_

prologue

 

Dear Mr. Vantas & Ms. Harley,

Aradia Megido has had Eridan Ampora erased from her memory. Please never mention their relationship to her again.

                              Thank you.

LACUNA INC.

210 E Grand St. New York, NY 10019

_-_

_He’s tried everything. He called her, he emailed her, he texted her, he drove by their—his—apartment and rang the doorbell and waited there for an hour, his hands shoved deep in his pockets so he didn’t bite his nails, his toes curled up in tense anxiety inside his shoes, but there was no answer. He’s tried everything, but she won’t answer. It’s like he never even existed to her._

_And every night, he curls up in his borrowed bed in Karkat and Jade’s spare room and hugs the hard pillow to his stomach, pretending it’s her, pretending his arms aren’t wrapped around a lump of goose feathers and rough fabric. He tries to remember the exact way she smelled, a mix of cinnamon and coffee and vanilla body wash, and how it felt when she pressed her cold toes into his calves when she crawled into bed and how her hair tickled his chin when he held her in his arms and how her chest rose and fell rhythmically in the late-morning sunlight, illuminated skin broken by the slats of the blinds. He pictures her eyes, and her nose, and her hands, and her feet, and the curve of her stomach and the back of her neck and the dip of her left shoulder and the star-shaped freckle on her left breast, right above her heart, and he tells himself that he’ll forget it all someday, forget her entirely. She is not the only one._

_But she was his only one._

_Karkat tells him to move on. He says it every day, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, sometimes worried. Jade just stares at him with anxious eyes and then goes to make him another cup of coffee. Eridan can’t stand it. They look at him like he’s something fragile, like he could break at any moment and his guts could spill onto their threadbare rug and his brain could fall out onto the kitchen table and maybe he wouldn’t even mind if it did. Maybe he’d be able to stop thinking about her then._

_-_

_He finds the card one day when Jade and Karkat are at work. They’ve hidden it on a bookshelf, in between Karkat’s romance novels and the biology textbooks Jade keeps for grad school. He’s just looking for something to occupy his mind. He left all of his books at their apartment when they both stormed out—most of them were hers’, anyway, but he read them all, brushing his fingertips over the passages she’d underlined and the words she’d circled and the little notes she’d made in the margins, always trying to get inside her head, figure out what she was thinking. She was so hard to understand sometimes. He sometimes thought he had her figured out, and then he always realized he really knew nothing about her at all. But he loved that about her. He loved that he had to find her, the_ real _her, like a fossil buried under years and years of defensive dirt and grime. And he loved that sometimes, she would let him._

_The card is so small that it fits in the palm of his hand perfectly, clean points pressing indents into his skin. There are only a few words printed on it, but they make his blood run cold._

_He stares and stares and stares, and then crushes it in his fist, and then smoothes it out again and runs to the computer and keys the address into the search bar._

_-_

_“I want it done.”_

_“No,” Karkat says immediately._

_“Why?” Eridan retorts. “You keep tellin' me to move on.”_

_“Not like_ this, _” says Karkat. Jade nods sympathetically, bustling around in the kitchen, slamming cabinets and pouring even more cups of coffee for them. Eridan swears he’s drunk more cups of coffee in the week and a half he’s lived with her than he has in the rest of his life combined._

_“It’s takin’ too long to forget. I want her gone, I really do. I mean, there’s no chance for me now, is there? If it worked, then she doesn’t even remember who I am.”_

_Just thinking the words makes something in his chest seize up, like drinking too much red wine at once, and he suddenly can’t breathe. He clutches the edge of the table, feeling the sharp corners cut into the creases where his fingers meet his palm, hoping the pain will keep him grounded._

_“Eridan, do you really want them fucking with your brain?” says Karkat. His eyebrows are furrowed, his fingers toying with the cuffs of his too-long sweater. Eridan knows he’s sincerely worried—either that, or he doesn’t want Eridan stuck as a brain-fried half-wit while he’s staying in Karkat’s apartment. It’d probably kill the last remnants of whatever sex life he and Jade have left._

_Eridan sighs, tipping his chair back on two legs, and locks his fingers behind his neck. “I don’t know,” he says. “At this point, I just want it over with. She obviously doesn’t care about me anymore. Maybe she never fuckin’ did, I don’t know.”_

_“She cared about you,” interrupts Jade, depositing a chipped mug in front of Eridan. The bitter tang of coffee drifts upwards in wisps of steam. “You know she did. She just…”_

_“Just what?” he explodes. “Cared, but just didn’t care enough to tell me she hated my fuckin’ guts?”_

_“That’s not true—“_

_“Fuck this,” he mutters, and shoves his chair away from the table. His coffee mug overturns, and Karkat starts in on another one of his curse-filled tirades, but Eridan’s grabbed his scarf and slammed the door behind him before he can care._

_-_

_The waiting room is the color of toast and smells like cough drops. Eridan fidgets on the hard seat, wiggling the cheap plastic pen between his fingers and trying to imagine her sitting in a place so drab and lifeless. She must have been really desperate. Everybody in the room looks dead—eyes focused straight ahead, mouths pulled into tight frowns, permanent lines etched into their foreheads. Some of them are clutching bags or boxes, filled to the brim with letters and jewelry and pictures and CDs. They all look shell-shocked, like war victims. Completely unlike her. She never looked lifeless._

_“Eridan Ampora?”_

_Eridan looks up. The receptionist is standing at the front of the room, clipboard clasped between two well-manicured hands. Two years ago, he would have thought she was pretty—gorgeous, even._

_She catches his eye, and he stands and straightens his scarf. “Doctor Lalonde will see you now,” she says briskly, and turns on one heel, marching into the bowels of the office without even waiting to see if he follows._

_Eridan pauses. The soulless inmates of the waiting room are all staring at him now, like he’s some freak on exhibit at a circus. Their mindless synchronicity is terrifying._

_He follows the receptionist._

_“You’re lucky we could make room in the schedule for you,” she says. “The period of time after Christmas is a very busy time of year for us, you know.”_

_“Thanks,” mumbles Eridan._

_Doctor Lalonde’s office is no bigger than a broom closet, and about as well-decorated. Eridan’s surprised to see it’s a woman sitting behind the desk—small, blonde and proper, her lips painted pitch black and her fingers steepled under her chin. She’s young, too, all sharp lines and precise angles, no wrinkles in her paper white skin._

_“Thank you, Kanaya,” she says. “Go check on Mr. Kaufman, would you?”_

_The receptionist nods and closes the door behind Eridan. He has the very uncomfortable sensation of a jailer locking the door to a cell._

_“Hello, Mr. Ampora,” Doctor Lalonde says. “How are you today?”_

_Eridan groans and rubs his chin. It’s rough with stubble—he hasn’t been shaving regularly, he realizes; he must look like a fucking mess right now._

_“To be honest, Doc,” he sighs, “not too fuckin’ good.”_

_Doctor Lalonde nods and makes a note on the clipboard Kanaya handed to her. “And who are you here to erase?”_

Erase. _She’ll be gone forever. Like the past two years of his life never existed. He won’t even know her name._

_He clears his throat. “Uh, an ex-girlfriend,” he mutters. “Well, I mean—she was almost my fiancée, or she woulda been, but she, uh—anyway, her name, her name’s Aradia. Aradia Megido.”_

_“Aradia Megido?”_

_“Yeah. I know she had me erased too,” Eridan tells her, catching the spark of recognition at the name on Doctor Lalonde’s face. “You don’t have to fuckin’ tiptoe around it or anythin’.”_

_Doctor Lalonde sets down her pen. It clicks against the wooden desk, dislodging an avalanche of paperclips. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ampora. You shouldn’t have found out about that.”_

_“Well I did, so it doesn’t fuckin’ matter now, does it?”_

_She must be used to shit like this by now. Christ, what a job, erasing people’s minds every day. Eridan wonders how the hell she’s still sane._

_“What you have to do,” says Doctor Lalonde, folding her hands on the desk, “is go home and collect everything that you own with even the slightest connection to Ms. Megido. We’ll need these objects to form a map of her in your brain. It’s vital that you bring every item that reminds you of her. Even one overlooked photograph can negate the effects of the process. After that, our technicians will do the erasing in your home tonight while you sleep. When you wake up, it will be as if nothing had happened—a new life awaiting you.”_

_-_

_It’s like she was never even here, but Eridan didn’t really expect any less._

_He knew she wouldn’t stay in the apartment. It was his name on the deed, after all, and the only reason he’d left in the first place was because it was too lonely there, too empty without anyone else. Which is stupid. He’d been on his own for twenty-three years before her._

_She’d been back, though. She’d taken her books and her CDs, her clothes and her journals and her vodka and her laptop and her favorite blanket that they’d bought together in the flea market one weekend last autumn when the leaves in Central Park were changing colors and falling in a fiery maelstrom, when she was wearing that sweater that was two sizes too big and smelled like burned things and fell past her wrists. Lacuna’s probably got all of it now._

_It’s hard to know what to take, because shouldn’t he take everything? She sat with him at that table, she kissed him on that couch, she fucked him on that bed and on that floor and against that wall and he should just burn everything and then burn the ashes, make sure that she’s completely gone. But he takes a garbage bag—symbolic, he thinks—and starts throwing things in with a vengeance that will probably break the weak plastic. The coffee mug she always drank out of. The stupid cereal she ate every fucking morning. The Polaroids from her shitty old camera and the pillow that still smells like her shampoo and the earrings he bought her for their one year anniversary and the Joy Division record they used to dance to when they were drunk and that scarf that she’d always loved more than all his other stupid scarves and everything, he tears everything apart, he searches the fucking place from top to bottom and takes everything that has her fingerprints, her smell, the memory of her laugh. She’s cancer. He’s cutting her out._

_Then he gets to the dresser drawer._

_He hadn’t forgotten about it—of course not, it’s not possible to forget about things like this. Subconsciously, he just stopped thinking about it. It’s a psychological thing, selective memory loss, he thinks it’s called. The mind defending itself._

_From the outside, the little box looks so innocent. His fingers brush against it by accident when he’s rifling through papers, and before he knows it, he’s closed his hand around it and pulled it out from under all the useless shit he’s buried it beneath._

_He should put it in the garbage bag. He knows he should. It’s the only part of her left to get rid of._

_Instead, Eridan sits down on the bed with a thump and cracks it open carefully._

_It wasn’t expensive. He knew she wouldn’t want anything expensive. She’d probably have made him return it. So he got a simple band, silver instead of gold and two garnets in her favorite shade of deep red flanking the tiny, glittering diamond. He thought she’d love it._

_When he thinks about exactly how much this little thing, so small he could probably bend it between his forefinger and thumb until it’s warped into an oval that wouldn’t fit the thinnest finger, has fucked up simply by existing, he wants to throw it out the window and never see it again. He wants to take it and everything it stands for back. If only Lacuna could erase events instead of memories._

_Instead, he closes the box gently and slips it into his pocket._

_-_

_“My name is Eridan Ampora, an' I’m here to erase Aradia Megido.”_

_Doctor Lalonde nods, her pen making soft scratching sounds against the paper. The tape recorder clicks away in the background. “Please tell me about Miss Megido.”_

_“Okay. Yeah, okay.” Eridan blows a puff of air out between his pursed lips. “Uh. Aradia. I called her Ar.”_

_“How did you meet her?”_

_“It was the American Museum of Natural History. She was sittin’ in front of one of the fossil exhibits, one of those huge skeletons they got on the third floor, y’know? An’ she was just sittin’ there, concentratin’ so hard on this damn fossil. I didn’t see what was so interestin’ about it. So I sat down next to her, right, an’ started starin’ at it too. An’ we stayed like that for a long time. An’ then she said…”_

_A dam breaks the moment he starts talking. He couldn’t stop the tide gushing from his mouth into the empty space of the office even if he wanted to. The words are coming fast and thick and heavy, pooling on his tongue and tumbling onto the wooden desk like so many drops of water in a waterfall, crashing through his own ears and drowning him in history. As he talks, he remembers more about her, every detail he’d locked away from the front of his mind as protection, and he lets them all spill away as quickly as they rise to the surface. Doctor Lalonde captures every drop in her hands, examines it clinically, and records its shape, size and color on her clipboard._

_By the time he’s talked himself dry, it’s raining outside, fat drops pounding against the window and demanding to be let in. Doctor Lalonde switches off the tape recorder and says “Very good, Mr. Ampora.”_

_Eridan feels numb. He pulls his hands into the sleeves of his sweater. His head aches._

_-_

_“Okay, so basically what we’re gonna do is make a map. ‘Cept it’s a map of your brain. Sick, right?”_

_“Uh,” Eridan says._

_The technician—he said to call him Dave—grins, but Eridan can’t see his eyes behind his huge dark shades. He’s wearing a white lab coat with the sleeves rolled up and what looks like a joint in the pocket, which doesn’t make Eridan trust him any more. Plus, he’s got the thickest Southern accent Eridan’s heard in years, even though they’re in New York City._

_“Basically, I’m gonna show you all the shit you brought in, and this thing—“ he taps the helmet that looks suspiciously like a salon hair-dryer currently secured over Eridan’s head with one finger—“records your brain activity and reactions, and it makes, like, a fucking map of where your memories are. It’s pretty dope.”_

_“Are you sure it’s safe?” asks Eridan._

_Dave shrugs. “Don’t think it’s_ not _safe.”_

_The first item he pulls out of the bag is a book about archaeology and paleontology he bought for her at their favorite book store on Essex Street. Eridan has no idea why Aradia didn’t take it. It was hers’, after all. Maybe she knew he was going to have her erased, too, and she wanted to leave him enough evidence to get rid of her completely._

_“I bought that for her cause she liked—“_

_“Dude, no offense, but it works better if you shut up.”_

_“Oh.”_

_On the screen, green dots appear on the scan, and Dave nods. “Looks good. ‘Kay, here’s the next one.”_

_Bits and pieces of the past two years flash by, piecemeal, and Eridan watches as he gives each small part over to the machine. Aradia’s face, from a million different angles, in sunlight, moonlight, in fluorescent strip lights and candlelight and no light at all, her eyes melancholy, fascinated, exhausted, fanatic, drunk. Her body, twisting its way down long stretches of memory like a ghost, leaving a vapor trail through dark streets he hasn’t visited in years. The machine eats everything with clean precision, cataloguing each image as a green pixel, and Eridan lets it take everything he can give._

_He doesn’t take the box out of his pocket._

_-_

_The sun has nearly fallen over the skyline by the time he stumbles home, the streetlamps just beginning to cast watery circles of light onto the piles of slushy snow covering the sidewalk. Eridan shoves his hands deep into his coat pockets and bows his head. The streets are, thankfully, almost empty. Everyone is at home, in their warm living rooms with friends and smiles and a happy post-holiday glow. From far away, he can hear the shouts emanating from Time Square. Fuck, is it really December 31 st already?_

_How fitting. A new year, a new life._

_Eridan staggers into his apartment without turning on the light, gropes for the bottle of Jack Daniels in his cabinet, and swigs half the bottle while he watches the flash of fireworks banging and popping over the skyline. Artificial fire burns down his esophagus, sour and smooth, igniting his chest so that he can only feel a different kind of pain, an arresting warmth that demands his attention, and it fights off the dull ache pulsing behind his eyes to the beat of her name for as long as he needs it to. He falls into bed as the clock strikes midnight, the empty bottle in one hand and the little velvet box clutched tight in the other, a ward against evil._

_He does not dream._


	2. chapter 1

_bones, sinking like stones,_  
 _all that we fought for,_  
 _homes, places we've known,_  
 _all of us are done for._

_  
_ chapter 1

The first thing Eridan becomes aware of is harsh, constant beeping, growing louder every second, next to his ear. It’s monotone and constant, the world’s most obnoxious metronome, steady as a heartbeat, and it hammers on the inside of his skull.

The second is that his head is pounding like a bass drum and his mouth seems to be stuffed full of dry, sticky cotton. Eridan tries to swallow down the muck, but his throat is bone-dry and paralyzed, an arid mess.

The third is that when he opens his eyes slowly, unsticking his lids from where they’ve been glued closed with sleep, his clock reads 8:21.

Holy _shit,_ he is _so fucking late._

How the fuck did he sleep through twenty-one minutes of his alarm? Eridan throws his hand out and bangs the off button before realizing his fingers had been clutched around something small and soft. The object—whatever it was—dislodges itself from his loose fist and skitters across the hard wood floor to land somewhere under his dresser where he can’t reach.

“Fuck,” Eridan groans, and swings his legs over the edge of the mattress.

He can barely even work up the energy to be frantic about how much fucking trouble he’s going to be in when he gets into work late. He seems to have thrown a tantrum in his living room and then given himself a hangover of epic fucking proportions. The contents of his shelves are strewn across the floor haphazardly; unless there had been a break in and he’d slept through it, which is a whole other train of thought he can’t even begin to consider right now, he must have been really, really drunk. His closet isn’t much better—he has to spend five precious minutes finding a shirt that isn’t wrinkled and a jacket and pants that actually match. It doesn’t help that he’s also spending the whole time trying to figure out what the hell happened the night before. He’s got a set of colorless, unfocused memories, and the faint recollection of a nonsensical dream where he was chasing something through a huge maze for what seemed like eternity, but he never caught it—whatever _it_ was. He can’t piece any of it together into something that makes sense. It feels like whole chunks of his memory are gone. God, he hates waking up hungover.

His kitchen is a mess, too, an even worse one than the living room. Eridan thinks he must have been pretty fucking drunk to throw stuff around like that. Maybe he was celebrating another New Year all alone and feeling sorry for himself, just like he has for the past three years. He’s always hated the New Year, especially since he came to live in the city, where every December 31st is so revered, like it’s the best fucking thing that’s happened all year and nothing could go wrong on that day. Eridan’s never seen the attraction—there’s nothing that special about it; it just means you have to go out and buy another calendar and make some stupid resolutions to stop drinking and socialize more and cut back on smoking that you’ll forget about in two weeks’ time. Eridan’s pretty sure he was drunk off his ass for the past three New Years’ Eves too, but he’s not actually sure. Unsurprisingly, he can’t remember them too well.

Karkat calls him while he’s running around his apartment and trying to find his briefcase and laptop, which have mysteriously gone missing in the Huge Drunken Rampage of Last Night. “What the fuck, Kar,” he says into the phone. “It’s, like, eight fuckin’ thirty. Why are you awake?”

“Good fucking morning to you too, asswipe,” Karkat says, but he sounds calmer than he usually is. His insults don’t hold as much venom as normal. “How are you doing?”

“How am I _doin’_?” Eridan finds his briefcase sitting on the couch under a pile of blankets, smelling like whiskey and cigarette smoke. His laptop is dead and he has no idea where the charger is and he’s officially got fifteen minutes to get into his office building, which is a twenty-minute taxi ride when the streets are completely empty. _Fuck it._ He slams the apartment door behind him and punches the elevator call button a few times, glancing at his watch and cursing under his breath intermittently. “Well, it’s the first day of the New Year. I’m hungover, exhausted, mighta lost my memory, an’ fuckin’ late to work on top of all this shit. I’m doing pretty fuckin’ great, Kar.”

The elevator finally comes, dinging pleasantly into the empty hallway, and Eridan rushes on and jabs the button for the lobby. “What was that about your memory?” asks Karkat.

“S’ fuckin’ gone,” Eridan says. “Side effect of too much whiskey an’ not enough sleep or somethin’, you know. Plus my apartment is a goddamn mess and I have no idea why.”

“You don’t remember _anything_?”

“Yeah, Kar, that’s kinda what I just said. I still know how to talk, idiot.”

“Well, fuck,” says Karkat.

Eridan groans into the phone. “Listen, I gotta get to work, okay? Say hi to Jade for me.”

“Call me if you start feeling, uh, weird,” Karkat says.

“Weird? Kar, what the fuck are you—“

“I’m going now, have fun at work,” says Karkat, and hangs up. The dial tone is flat and angry. Eridan sighs through his clenched teeth.

The street is cold and windy— _god, he hates winter_ —and it takes just about forever to hail a taxi. Eridan huddles deeper into his pea coat and waves aggressively at the street, puzzling over Karkat’s bizarre behavior. Karkat’s always been dependably boring, the same old shouty, undersized ball of rage every day since Eridan’s met him. He’s almost never blatantly compassionate, as far as Eridan can tell, much less sympathetic enough to call his friends out of the blue at nine a.m. just to make sure they’re alright. Maybe he was still drunk, or sleep deprived, or something? Or maybe Jade had made him call to make sure Eridan wasn’t too lonely? That sounds like something Jade would do; she’s more of a mother than Eridan’s own one is to him.  He’d never admit it, but it’s kind of nice. He _does_ get lonely a lot.

He finally flags down a taxi after ten minutes, which means he’s going to be ten minutes later to his office, which means he’s going to be really fucked when he finally gets to work. His cabbie is silent, but he blares loud folk music in a foreign language throughout the whole ride up to Sixth Street, which does jack shit to help Eridan’s lingering hangover headache and everything to make his mood even worse. He slams the door and doesn’t tip when the taxi finally pulls up in front of his office building at 9:13.

What a way to start the fucking New Year.

The elevator’s slow, the lobby packed with tourists milling about aimlessly while people in black suits with briefcases and Blackberries who actually have fucking jobs to get to bustle through the crowd, speaking rapidly into headsets. Maybe other people have time for celebration, but in the vicious corporate world Eridan’s come to call his home, vacation doesn’t exist.

His secretary, Nepeta, looks up and smiles at him when he bursts into the office, sixteen minutes late. “The meeting’s about to start, Mr. Ampurra,” she tells him, elongating the ‘por’ of his last name into a catlike drawl. “Do you need anything?”

“Get me a coffee, Nep,” Eridan says, and rushes into the glass-walled conference room.

His boss glances up from where he’s standing at the head of the elliptical table when Eridan opens the door, and Eridan’s heart sinks. The whole room is already full with his coworkers and representatives from their client company; they’re all at least ten years older than him, as usual. It’s bad enough that Eridan’s the youngest one at his management firm besides the secretaries and receptionists. Now he looks lazy and unorganized, coming in late like this. His boss is staring at him with an expression like an angry teacher, and suddenly Eridan feels like he’s back in high school and he’s been caught in the hallway without a pass.

Eridan quietly drops into the only empty seat left, dumps his briefcase onto the table, and fishes out his notepad.

He hasn’t gotten a real break from this since he turned twenty-two and graduated from Columbia. Maybe even before that—he’d been hired the day after his graduation ceremony due to a very lucky internship and a very influential father. And ever since then, he’d all but sold his soul to fucking CrockerCorp. His life is work; he hasn’t had a serious relationship in what seems like forever.

It’s okay, though, because he’s successful, and that’s the most important thing in life, isn’t it? He makes a shit ton of money, after all, and he’s made his father proud. Working for CrockerCorp is a huge achievement—it’s one of the biggest industries in the _world._ It’s the life he’d always craved: living in a big city, working his ass off in a tall skyscraper somewhere, going to elegant cocktail parties every weekend, having his own apartment, everything he’d dreamed of when he was a restless sixteen-year-old kid with stars in his eyes and conquer on his mind stuck in a small, rich New England town. It’s the life he’d chosen for himself when he went to college and when he majored in business and when he applied to CrockerCorp and took the job.

But it gets boring, and it gets very lonely, all alone in his big office at the corner of the building on 6th and Washington, where he can watch happy friends and happy couples and happy families pass by on the street below every day. Sometimes he hates them; sometimes he wants to be them. And sometimes he just wants to go back to sleep. Today, it’s definitely the latter.

Eridan doodles in the margins of his legal pad and listens with half his mind while his boss argues with someone from the client company—he can’t even remember who they’re supposed to be in negotiations with right now; everything is blurring together in his memory, words running into each other and mixing like an old watercolor painting—and snow keeps falling outside and Nepeta keeps refilling coffee cups and the world keeps on spinning. He draws an eye, and a star, and a leaf, and then the letters A.M. in cursive in the corner.

_A yellow legal pad, messy notes scribbled between the lines in a thin, slanting hand. The margins are covered in intertwining letters, the same ones repeated over and over again: “A.M.”_

It comes like a flash of lightning. The image takes over Eridan’s mind abruptly and completely, blocking the conference room from his vision, and his ears ring hollow with forgotten sound, his heart suddenly pounding in double time. It’s clear as day—sharper than a memory, in HD focus, not something he could have made up on his own. For a split second, his entire mind is the yellow legal pad, the letters _A. M._ in cursive handwriting that’s shockingly similar to his own.

He closes his eyes, shakes his head, tries to clear his mind and his ears and his sight. The image dissolves into fragments of color, swirling into whatever corner of his mind it came from. Eridan looks up.

Everyone’s getting up from the table, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries; one of his colleagues, Vriska, is giving him a strange look out of the corner of her eye, but no one else seems to have noticed. Besides, Vriska’s always giving him strange looks.

Fucking fabulous.

Eridan shoves his notepad into his briefcase and tries to stand up, but a wave of dizziness crashes over him, and he has to lean on his chair for support. Vriska’s trying to hide a malicious grin and not succeeding. He resists the urge to do something ridiculously juvenile like stick his tongue out at her.

It’s not even noon, and Eridan already hates the New Year. Despondent, he pushes open the door to his office and throws his briefcase onto his desk. Nepeta has a steaming cup of coffee waiting for him, which he guesses is nice, but his computer is beeping with angry messages he has to deal with already and his head is screaming at him and he’s still confused about that sudden wave of dizziness. He doesn’t even know what A.M. stands for, or why he’d written it in the first place. All he wants to do is go home, put on a Joy Division record, crawl under a huge pile of comforters, and sleep off his fucking hangover already.

He puts his head in his hands and leans on his elbows, staring at his desk calendar until his eyes begin to water behind his thick glasses. It’s covered in glaringly red pen, every single day inked in with some fucking mind-numbing business meeting or conference or presentation. There is not a single personal event written anywhere on it.

There are, however, a lot of large black marks that look like they were made with Sharpie covering parts of some of the squares. Eridan doesn’t remember making them. He must be developing early-onset Alzheimer’s or something. For fuck’s sake, that’s exactly what he needs on top of the steaming pile of shit that his life already is.

He checks his phone—Karkat’s texted once, Jade three times—and his email and tries to avoid doing any actual work for as long as he can. But he’s got a depressingly large mountain of work to do; there’s a reason he’s the youngest corporate manager CrockerCorp has had in forty years, and he’s not ready to give that up. They didn’t hire him to check his fucking messages all day. His boss is already pissed—if he’s not careful, he’s going to get himself fired for being so fucking lazy, and Vriska fucking Serket is probably going to have her bony ass in his luxury leather desk chair. _God,_ he hates her.

Nepeta pokes her head in the door, another cup of coffee clutched in her hand, just as Eridan’s caffeine craving starts up its’ call again. She is the _best secretary ever._

“You are the best secretary ever,” Eridan says fervently, and stands up to take the mug from her.

She stays, lingering in the doorway even after he sits back down. “Um,” she says.

“Yes?” Eridan asks, running a hand through his hair and clicking through one of a thousand dry-as-shit reports he was supposed to have read over the holiday break.

“Mr. Amp—Eridan, are you alright?”

There is something wrong with this question. Both he and Nepeta believe in a very definite separation of work and personal life. He likes her well enough; outside of his job, he’d even consider them close friends. But inside the office, she’s never even called him by his first name. He has no idea why she’d be asking him about if he is fucking _alright_ while he’s clearly stressed out and busywith work for the company.

“I’m just tired,” he says, and sighs. “Late night or somethin’, you know.”

Nepeta’s eyes are wide and concerned, bright green against her small tan face. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll let you get back to work. I just wanted to make sure—after you and—“

She breaks off before she can finish her sentence. “Me and who?” Eridan says impatiently.

Nepeta shakes her head. “Never mind. I’ll let you get back to work, Mr. Ampurra. I’m sorry for the interruption.”

What the fuck, Eridan thinks. This day keeps getting stranger and stranger.

An hour later, when he’s finally beginning to make a dent in the metric shit ton of work that’s piled up in his inbox over the week he was out of the office, moping around his apartment and generally feeling miserable for himself, Vriska barges through the door with Nepeta hot on her heels. Nepeta is looking distressed. Vriska is, as always, a hot, bitchy mess.

“Do you have the report on Scratch Banking ready yet?” she says, not even stopping to say hello. “Because I need it. Right now. Pick up the pace, Ampora, we haven’t got all day.”

Eridan grits his teeth. “Last I checked, you were the one workin’ for me, _Miss Serket,_ ” he answers, trying to keep his voice steady.

“I tried to keep her out,” Nepeta says helplessly.

Vriska flips her long sheet of blond hair over one shoulder and leans on his desk, sharp blue nails clicking against the wood. “You know it’s due at the end of the day,” she says silkily. “The boss needs it on his desk by five. What have you been doing all afternoon, texting your girlfriend?”

Nepeta makes a strangled sound and lunges for Vriska.

Eridan furrows his brow. “My _girlfriend?_ ”

“Yeah,” says Vriska. “You know, that girl you’ve been seeing for two years that you won’t shut up about? What’s her name, A—“

He blinks bemusedly.

Nepeta’s dragged her out of his office—forcibly, it seems—and now is having what sounds like a very angry talk with Vriska just outside of his now-closed office door. Eridan can’t say he doesn’t appreciate it, but Nepeta’s never been anything but courteous to anyone higher up in the company than her. He’s never seen her so much as raise her voice at Vriska, even though everybody in the office besides the boss hates her to death and bitches her out multiple times a day, including him. Nepeta’s always polite to _everyone_.

His head hurts so fucking much right now.

It’s only later, when he’s climbing into a taxi that will take him back to his cold, empty apartment in TriBeCa that night after another day of corporate bullshit that he remembers what it was that Vriska said that made Nepeta react so violently.

 _Girlfriend?_ Eridan hasn’t had a girlfriend for as long as he could remember. He’s the Eternal Bachelor, the guy that doesn’t even have time to date, and he’s gotten used to it by now. He barely even minds. He’d had his fill of misguided relationships during college. And even though he got lonely sometimes—recently, a lot more than usual—he never stopped to consider how bad it had gotten.

Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him. Maybe he just needs a good, solid girl in his life, and he’ll stop waking up every morning with the sensation that there’s a yawning black hole in the pit of his stomach.  That still doesn’t explain what the fuck Vriska was talking about, though.

When the taxi pulls up to his building, Eridan rushes up to his landing and lets himself in with fumbling fingers. He’s not glad to be back home, exactly, but he’s relieved to be somewhere all by himself. His apartment is lonely and cold and impersonal, but it’s his, and it’s a buffer between him and the outside world. It’s better than work or the city streets or the back of a taxi cab with broken shocks.

He sheds his suit jacket and makes himself a cup of coffee and watches the news, and then reheats some leftover Chinese food from a few nights ago and scarfs it down, duck sauce dribbling down his chin unattractively while he burns his tongue. The TV barks at him through the empty space: _Murder! Financial crisis! War! Depression!_

It’s too quiet. He feels uncomfortable all of a sudden, like his skin doesn’t fit right around his bones, and he shivers. There’s something pressing at the edges of his mind, just out of reach, the same feeling he gets when he’d been thinking about something only a moment before and then lost his train of thought. It itches like an old scab.

He probably just needs to get rid of all this extra stress. He needs to relax, forget about a long, fucking horrible day, and calm the fuck down.

Eridan puts his dishes in the sink and runs water over them, listening to the sound of the tap rushing past his ears atonally. He closes his eyes and pretends he is underwater. It helps a little. He puts the dishes in the dishwasher, goes to his room, and closes his door.

Jacking off is more routine than anything these days, but it still gets some of the nervous tension out of his shoulders at the end of a long day, so he flips open the button on his pants and unzips the fly, pushing his hand into his boxers and groaning. God, he needs this. His life _sucks._

It’s never as good on his own as it is with someone else, but it’s okay, it’ll do for now. He jerks his hand sloppily a few times, head lolling back on the pillow, trying to concentrate on the sensation. His eyes close.

_Her cheeks are flushed bright pink, her eyes sparkling like stars, and her red, red mouth forms an impossibly round ‘O.’ She arches back, hair flying, stomach taut, fingers clutching into his shoulders hard enough to leave bruises like he is the only thing tethering her to earth. Heat builds in his gut, and he cries out at the same time she does, their warmth and noise and emotion mingling in the sticky air coating their skin._

_She is always beautiful, but he thinks she is the most beautiful like this, raw and uncensored and completely given over to pure emotion. Her skin shines in the yellow light filtered through the curtains as if she is fire in his arms. She burns him, but he does not want to let go, no matter how painful it gets._

Eridan’s hand moves faster on his cock without him telling it to, and the images start coming faster and thicker now, too, crashing over him, filling him with borrowed sensation and memories of a place and time he’s sure he’s never been, and yeah, he’s confused, but he’s also really fucking turned on, and he doesn’t have the willpower or the mental capacity to stop.

_He doesn’t say her name—he doesn’t say anything, he just moans and sighs and she sighs back, whimpers and whispers his name a thousand times in a thousand different ways that dance from her tongue like music.  He holds her tighter as their bodies crescendo together and he nearly sobs because he feels so much, he feels everything so clearly, and he cannot imagine anything better in his life than this, than her, than what they’ve made together._

It’s completely disorienting, so much so that he can barely remember where he is, which version of himself is the real one, and he cries out. He can’t help it. It’s a raw sound, half pleasure and half pain because what he feels now is only a shadow of what this strange man in his mind is feeling—this man with his hands and his voice, but with something else that he’s never felt before in his life and he’s sure he never will feel.

He stuffs his empty hand into his mouth and bites down hard, just to feel something that’s comprehensible and real, and then it’s over, the memory fading into colorless static so that the only thing left to feel is the dull pain left by his teeth. He collapses back into the pillows and closes his eyes.

Christ.

Eridan stretches his fingers, watching the way the tendons flex under the bite-marked skin, tries not to think about it, and immediately fails. He clutches desperately for the last bits of the fleeting image in his mind, especially the girl’s face, her voice, anything about her. He can’t even think of her name, but she looked so familiar in such a strange, unplaceable way, like a remnant of a past life. He’s _supposed_ to know who she is.

His body aches when he stands up and walks slowly to the bathroom, protesting every step he takes. He cleans up and splashes his face with ice-cold water and then stares at himself in the mirror. His cheeks are flushed, his pupils blown wide and black and his hair a mess.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” he whispers to his reflection. His lips repeat the words back to him, curving around the syllables slowly.

 He takes off his shirt and pants, climbs into bed, and shuts off the light. 


	3. chapter 2

_i was happy in the haze of a drunken hour_

_but heaven knows I'm miserable now…_

_  
_ chapter 2

She doesn’t go away.

Eridan’s getting used to her, though. It’s still strange and disorienting—he doesn’t think he’ll ever grow acclimated to the seemingly haphazard memory-visions that burst into his head, taking over his senses for whole minutes at a time—but he’s taught himself to write them off as unimportant, something his brain conjures out of the vortex of boredom and loneliness he surrounds himself with. It’s been two weeks since he first saw her; none of the memories have been as intense since then as the one that nearly drove him insane that night. They’ve all been short, snatches of a picture, a few frames instead of the whole scene—a scarf, a laugh, a snowflake, a hand—the whole image hiding just beyond the edge of his consciousness. Her name is still eluding him, and it’s infuriating.

He recognizes places, though. Sometimes he catches a street sign or a familiar shop or room or piece of furniture, usually close to where he is when the image comes like lightning, sticking him to the spot until he rides the memory out. They’re all in New York City and they’re all places he’s only got faint memories of. He doesn’t know if that means anything.

But Eridan is determined to find out.

It’s a Saturday today, and for the first time in what feels like forever, it’s not completely disgusting outside. Eridan takes this as a sign. There’s one place in particular that shows up a lot in his memories: a specific part of Central Park, right in the middle of the city, that he vaguely remembers going to often during autumns past, when the trees were like flames and it was still warm enough to get away with wearing a sweater without a coat. It’s most likely covered in snowy slush right now, but he isn’t going to wait until spring to get to the bottom of it.

Plus, it’s not like he’s got anything else to do today besides watch shitty daytime TV and get drunk. Eridan’s not too anxious to go through that routine again. He’s already had years of weekends of that.

He texts Karkat, wraps himself in as many sweaters as can fit on top of each other, and halfheartedly combs down his hair, watching himself in the mirror carefully. He feels different today. He thinks his reflection looks different, too—maybe because his eyes finally have purpose in them, his feet have somewhere meaningful to take him, instead of the same nowheres he’s frequented every other day of his life. It’s strange to feel determined again. He hasn’t been this curious about anything for nearly as long as he can remember.

It’s snowing outside, but lightly enough that it doesn’t sting when it flutters against his face, the crystals condensing into tears on his cheeks. Eridan shoves his hands into his pockets and shoulders his way through the crowd. The streets are busy today; the city people are more aggressive than normal, talking louder into their phones and elbowing him in the sides. A child tugs on the end of his scarf; a group of teenagers brush past, knocking him off kilter, and his chest suddenly seizes up. His feet stall in the middle of the sidewalk. Abruptly, Eridan feels very sick—his head begins to pound, his vision swimming, colors blurring and fading in and out of focus.

He ducks into a coffee shop tucked between two skyscrapers and exhales slowly, suddenly aware that his breath has sped up, which it never does—he’s used to crowds, he lives in fucking New York, he never gets nervous—and rests his forehead in his hand.

_“Come on!”_

_She laughs brightly, her smile dazzling, and holds out her hands in an invitation. “Let’s get coffee. I feel like coffee right now.”_

_He frowns. “The gallery opens in fifteen minutes. We’re gonna be late.”_

_“You need to be more spontaneous,” she tells him, and takes hold of his hand with both of her own. “What are we going to miss by being a little late? Now coffee, that’s something worth stopping for. Come on, Eridan.”_

Eridan collapses heavily into a chair before his legs give out.

_It’s small and dark in the shop, filled with the smell of spices and coffee and warmth. The Pixies are playing over the stereo, and the walls are painted a dark, inviting brown, the floor unfinished and natural. It’s organic, magical, and he’s glad they stopped._

But the stereo isn’t playing The Pixies now, it’s something by Depeche Mode instead, and Eridan blinks his way back into the backs of his eyelids. Everything else is exactly the same—the musky smell, the bare lightbulbs, the rough, chocolate-colored floor, and for a moment, he almost thinks she’s there with him.

 Wildly, he wonders if he willed the shop into being by imagining it. It’s the only explanation he can think of. But there was that girl again in his head. He saw her eyes this time, open, inviting, and now he knows that they’re brown, russet as autumn, framed with lusty lashes that draw him in like a siren’s song. He knows those eyes. He _knows_ he does.

His hands are shaking. His legs aren’t steady, but he stands anyway, blood rushing up to meet his brain in a dizzying charge, and he stumbles over to the counter and orders an extra-large black coffee to warm his hands and his dull insides and so he can put something into his sickeningly empty stomach. It burns going down, blazing a trail of warmth through the center of his chest, and briefly, he wonders if this is how it feels to be split in half; briefly, he thinks maybe that would not be so bad.

He doesn’t want to die, but he wants his mind to be quiet. He wants to be completely still for just one day. He wants to know what is happening to him.

The barista watches him walk out the door. Eridan can feel her eyes on his back. Her hair is blue, blond roots showing through at the crown, and her eyes are glassy and vacant as a lake in January. She looks empty, too, he thinks, and he wonders if he looks half that lifeless.

He tugs at the cuffs of his sweater, trying to drown himself in the wool, and expels himself out into the icy bloodstream of the city.

Central Park is overrated. It’s nice enough, he guesses, an oasis in the center of a concrete wonderland, but for a boy who grew up in the middle of a forest, it’s an unpleasant reminder of home. Bare trees scared Eridan when he was younger; to him, they looked like skeletons, ulnas and tibias and femurs reaching up towards the iron sky, grasping with stiff, empty phalanges, seeking to crack the wintry void and let the stars tumble down. They were ribcages made to hold lost children in until they grew into bare skeletons as well.

Sometimes, there are children climbing the ribs of the park, but today’s too bleak for even the most intrepid youths. The sky is the color of slate, the park still and white, the depressing side of winter instead of the enchanting one. It’s strangely attractive, though; there’s no façade of sparkling beauty, just monochrome tones and austere ice, elegant in its stillness. And it’s empty. That’s good; Eridan isn’t in the mood for any more interaction than he absolutely has to deal with.

He finds the pond more easily than he thought he would, though he only has the faintest recollection of how to get to it. It’s a long walk through winding paths under the shade of solemn gray skeletons, and Eridan stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets and buries his nose into his scarf, regretting his expedition as he tries to chafe warmth back into his extremities.  He should’ve waited till spring, or at least for a day that wasn’t below freezing. He has work he could be doing right now. He has files to read, and representatives to contact, and ass to kiss.

The trees break away into a small clearing, and Eridan stops walking. The pond is frozen and silent, morning sunlight glittering off the surface in diamond shards, and it’s shockingly bright, the whole place glowing like a white flame, nearly magical, just this side of real. It’s a place for revelations.

Eridan walks cautiously over to the wrought-iron bench, wincing at each crunch of his foot on virgin snow. He feels like an intruder in the space. He’s interrupted something cosmic; just by stepping into the clearing, he’s broken some rule that he didn’t know existed. He is not supposed to be here. He knows it instinctively; it’s an ancient rule woven into the primal part of his brain that he hasn’t had need to access. Something is very wrong, both outside and inside of him.

He sweeps snow off the bench with the sleeve of his jacket gently. It falls to the ground in powdery clumps, denting spaces in the snow where it hits; some of it falls onto his shoe, and dampness begins to seep through his socks. He shivers slightly and looks back out at the lake. There’s something about its’ blank surface that’s bemusing. It isn’t _anything,_ doesn’t even reflect the sky—it’s a void. There’s nothing there, no water, no life. There is nothing right about it. There is nothing right about this whole place, about this whole day.

Tentatively, Eridan perches onto the bench, bitter cold trickling through his jeans, and tucks his red fingers between his legs. He takes deep gulps of icy air, counts his heartbeat— _one_ two, _one_ two—and hopes and then looks up.

A single leaf drifts down to skitter across the ice before settling in a drift at the other end. There is no sound, an absence of it nearly as significant as the absence of movement in the so-called water; it is so absolute that Eridan can hear his heartbeat filling his ears in a distinctly uncomfortable way.

He cannot feel his feet and his ears are screeching in pain and even his lungs are beginning to rebel, his breaths growing shallower with every forced intake of ice-oxygen, and Eridan braces his teeth against each other and crosses his fingers and stares at the pond until his eyes begin to sting and water from the harsh wind.

_The space is bright with color, an autumnal explosion, the treetops on fire with life and vitality. It’s vibrant, filled with laughing children, with friends and lovers and mothers and all kinds of city people, all of them happy. The pond’s glassy surface ripples in the breeze, loose leaves skimming across its surface before being tossed high into the air to swirl over their heads. In the air is the smell of wood smoke, tangy and sharp, and underneath that a scent that means colder temperatures, that means sweaters and short days of sunlight and fires in warm homes and oncoming winter, inevitable as the tick of the clock itself._

_She sits next to him, painted in autumn colors: her hair chestnut brown, her eyes russet and vivacious, her cheeks and lips full of redness and warmth. She has leaves caught in her hair like jewels; she looks like a nature sprite, a mischievous creature of the woods swathed in an oversized orange sweater. She belongs to nature in an essential way, and he feels as if he’s stolen her from the trees in which she belongs, and she is only his momentarily, and soon she’ll have to return to the treetops where she belongs._

The image is so vivid that for a moment, Eridan feels a breeze brush across his cheek, warmer than the icy winter wind blowing through the park. He smells wood smoke and cinnamon and hears laughter and the crunch of leaves underfoot. And suddenly he’s nostalgic for a season he’s never even liked before; he feels like he’s been missing something, like this is a fact intrinsic to his personality and he just forgot it. Autumn is his favorite season. Of course it is; autumn is when he met—

His mind slams up against a wall, and Eridan is left literally breathless. He chokes on the frigid air, gagging, trying to unfreeze his suddenly comatose windpipe and assuage the wintry pain in his chest. Surprised and in pain, he doubles over until his forehead brushes his cold knees, his hands clutching at his chest uselessly and scrabbling for purchase.

He’s fucked up. He wasn’t supposed to remember that. He wasn’t supposed to remember _anything_ about her.

_What is her name?_

Eridan sits back up slowly, uncurling his back from a comma into a jagged slash, dark against the white landscape, and catches his fill of frosty air until his lungs return to their normal fullness, only a transient ache left in his nose and his windpipe. He suddenly does not want to be here anymore.

He stands and crunches his way out of the park with quick, decisive steps, savagely enjoying the way he crushes the pure snow underfoot, how it compresses and gives way to his weight. He wants to destroy. He wants to stop thinking altogether.

When he gets to the street, he doesn’t start back towards his own home. Instead, as if by some invisible imperative, his feet turn away from TriBeCa and towards Soho, towards smaller apartment buildings and record shops and coffeehouses, towards Karkat and Jade’s place.

Jade answers the door. He has to ring the doorbell twice; after the second time, he checks his watch, and immediately feels like a dick. It’s not even nine am. They’re probably both asleep; Karkat is going to have his fucking balls on a platter.

Her appearance only corroborates this assumption. Jade’s wearing loose flannel pajama pants and a ragged t-shirt from Karkat’s old college, her hair tied up in a messy bun and her glasses askew.  Her eyes are half-open and smeared with day-old mascara, but when she sees Eridan, they spark with recognition at whatever expression is on his face and she wordlessly pulls him into a tight hug.

“Sorry, sorry,” Eridan mutters, and Jade laughs a little.

“Karkat’s going to be mad.”

“I texted,” he says helplessly.

She pulls back and smiles gently. “It’s okay, Eridan. Come in.”

He feels comforted just from stepping into the familiar hallway. Jade bustles away to make coffee, calling out to Karkat behind her, and moments later he stumbles out of the bedroom, shirtless and bleary-eyed.

“ _You,_ ” he growls when he catches sight of Eridan, snow-drenched, standing in the middle of his apartment. “You—batshit retarded douchefuck, it’s fucking five am, the sun isn’t even up, what the _ever-loving fuck_ are you doing here?”

Eridan spreads his hands helplessly. “I—uh, I’m not actually sure?”

“So what, you just fucking _sleepwalked_ all the way into godforsaken Soho and magically fucking _found yourself_ on our doorstep, huh? This isn’t a fucking nightclub, Ampora, I was getting my _beauty rest!_ ”

“Sorry,” Eridan repeats helplessly.

Karkat rolls his eyes and looks like he’s about to say something else—maybe an expletive-filled tirade, or maybe he’s too tired for even that—but then he just deflates and brushes past Eridan into the kitchen. “Come on, you fucking idiot. Guess you’re here now. I’m guessing you didn’t eat breakfast.”

When Eridan sits down at the messy table, scratched and coffee-ring-stained and overflowing with dirty dishes and papers, he feels the tension drain out of his shoulders. This is very familiar to him. This is something he associates with comfort, with friends who care about him, who want him to be happy and okay. Eridan’s brain equates Karkat and Jade and their apartment with trust and safety. That’s a good thing—he could use a heavy dose of trust and safety right now. He could _definitely_ do with a heavy dose of Jade’s omelets and her too-strong coffee.

“No,” he says. “I’m famished. Thanks.”

“I don’t understand how you’ve lived eight fucking years on your own without starving, fuckwad,” Karkat mumbles, but he turns to the refrigerator and pulls out a carton of eggs and starts cracking them into a pan.

The small room fills with the sound of sizzling and small talk as Jade and Karkat chatter quietly, exchanging insults and sweet nothings intermittently. Eridan’s always fascinated by their relationship. It seems as much built on instinctive rivalry and squabbling as love; ever since they’d met each other, they’d been in competition, both in work and their relationship. He’s often wondered how two headstrong, determined scientists like Karkat and Jade could function together without spiraling into fights every five minutes, but against all odds, they’ve made it work over the years, and they love each other. He knows they do. It’s so visible in moments like this, when Karkat comes up behind Jade and wraps his arms around her while she’s stirring and nuzzles her neck and she jumps a little and laughs and they forget that he’s even there, that it makes his heart ache for something he’s never even had.

He’s lonely. He’s watching Karkat and Jade and realizing that he has never been in love with someone in the way that they are in love with each other, and he never _will_ be in love that way, and he realizes that he has been lonely for his entire life.  He has friends, but he is still lonely in the deepest part of his chest, where there’s supposed to be warmth but instead there’s just cold, numb and frozen and rock-solid.

“I’m gonna die alone,” he says, mostly to himself.

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” Karkat calls back. “This isn’t your fucking pity party.”

Eridan holds up both his middle fingers in the direction of the kitchen and puts his head down on the table.

Five minutes later, Jade puts a huge plate of eggs and a mug of coffee down in front of him. It smells heavenly. “Eat up,” she says. “You’re looking thin these days, Eridan. Are you sure you’re eating enough?”

“I’m fine, mom,” he mumbles, and starts inhaling the food. It _tastes_ heavenly, too, and Jade doesn’t have to know that a lot of the time he’s in too much of a rush in the morning to eat and he’s too tired by the end of the day to put the effort into dinner and he’s often so behind that he has to work straight through his lunch break.

Karkat and Jade sit down on either side of him and drink coffee and smile at each other across the table while he eats, and when he finally pushes his plate away and leans back, his hands folded across his stomach, they both lean in.

“So,” Karkat says intently, “are you okay, Eridan?”

Eridan blinks. “What is this, a fuckin’ interrogation? I’m fine, Kar, don’t worry your pretty little head.”

“You look tired,” Jade says worriedly. There’s a little crease between her eyebrows where they meet over her nose. “Are you getting enough sleep? Are you staying late at work?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” he repeats, and sits back up as if to prove it. “Really. I’m okay, alright? What’s wrong with you guys?”

They exchange a look, and he suppresses a groan. “We know you’re a fucking adult and all that, Eridan, but the thing is—you don’t _seem_ okay,” says Karkat slowly. He talks like he’s picking each word out carefully before he says it.

“You’re never awake this early,” Jade adds. “And you look worried all the time, Eridan. And you call us at really weird times sometimes. And you say things like—well, like that you’re going to die alone, and scary things like that. I don’t think that’s good. You’re our friend, we just want to make sure you’re okay—“

“You’re gonna fucking kill yourself, dickshit, give yourself a fucking heart attack at twenty-five—“

“—should get more sleep—“

“—sound like fucking death warmed over when you call—“

“—looking way too thin—“

“—fucking two am, why were you even awake that late—“

“ _Stop it,”_ Eridan says. “Stop it. Stop.”

They both fall quiet.

He sighs and hunches into himself, his head falling into his hands, resigned, and all he wants to do is go back to bed. “I appreciate the concern,” he says. “I really do. I get it. You guys are my friends an’ shit. But I…fuck, I just—need to get my shit together or somethin’, I don’t know, but I’m gonna be okay, yeah? I don’t want you worryin’ about me. You’re makin’ me feel like shit. I just gotta figure some stuff out. I’m not gonna have a fuckin’ heart attack, Kar. An’ Jade, I promise I’m gonna sleep more an’ eat more an’ all that goddamn stuff, okay? Just—don’t waste your pity on me.”

This was a bad idea. He feels like complete and utter shit. He didn’t want to drag them down with him. That was the absolute last thing he wanted.

There’s a momentary pause, and then he feels Jade’s arms wrap around him, soft and strong, and Karkat says “you’re a fucking idiot, Ampora,” in a gruff voice.

“I know,” Eridan says. His throat is uncomfortably tight.

He doesn’t cry, though, and he prides himself on that. A few minutes later, Jade loosens her arms and steps back, watching him speculatively with cautious, worried green eyes. Karkat’s mouth is drawn into a tight frown.

“You know you’re always welcome here,” she says. “Always. No matter what Mr. Grumpy says, no matter what time of day or night.”

“I wouldn’t go that far—“

“Yes you would, Karkat, shut up.” Karkat rolls his eyes but offers Eridan a small smile over Jade’s shoulder. “Whatever you need, we’re here, okay? We won’t mind.”

Eridan can’t deny that what she’s saying is the kindest thing anyone’s said to him in months, possibly even years, but her reaction—both of theirs’—is strange. A little overdramatic, really, he thinks. Jade worries, he knows she does, but still, it’s usually not this _much._

“I’ll be fine,” he says, and makes an attempt to grin, though he’s sure it comes out wobbly. “Really, I’m gonna be okay. You’re sorta makin’ a big deal outta this, Jade, what’s up?”

She shakes her head furiously, wisps of black hair flying around her face. “No, it’s nothing. We just want to make sure you’re okay, after—shit.”

“After what?”

Jade’s gone strangely pale, her eyes wide behind her round glasses. She’s gnawing on her bottom lip.

“Oh,” she says, slightly breathless. “No. No, forget I said anything. I mean—nope, it was nothing!” Her ensuing giggle is a little too high-pitched to be completely believable. “After, um, all that time you spend at work.”

“I dunno.” Eridan leans back in his chair, tipping it up on the back two legs, and folds his forearms behind his neck. “To be honest, I think it’s gettin’ to me, all those long hours. I keep forgettin’ stuff, like shit I wrote down at work, y’know, and I keep losin’ stuff in my apartment like it’s not where I thought it was. You’re gonna be a doctor, what d’you think? Alzheimer’s?”

Jade shakes her head slowly, her bright eyes trained on Eridan, and he can feel Karkat’s gaze on him from the other side of the table as well. “You can’t get Alzheimer’s at this age,” she muses. “It’s probably nothing, Eridan, really. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.”

“Don’t be such a fucking hypochondriac,” Karkat adds, but Eridan thinks he looks just a bit more worried now than he did a second ago.

“And there’s more,” continues Eridan, giddy with the relief of finally having someone to tell it to.  “I keep gettin’ these weird—like, vision-memory-kinda things “There’s this girl, right? Always the same one, with crazy long brown hair, curly as fuck, really gorgeous, y’know. An’ these really brown eyes. An’ I can’t stop thinkin’ about her—not like consciously, though, like she just keeps comin’ up in my head an’ I can’t stop it from happenin’. I think I’m goin’ crazy,” he adds, leaning in conspiratorially.

“Fuck,” Karkat mutters under his breath. “Fuck, fucking fuck.”

Jade’s calmer, but her eyes still belie a hint of panic, her cheeks taut with anxiety. “But you don’t know her, right?” she says, sounding too nervous for the situation. Maybe it _is_ some kind of fucking mental disease, and she’s just figured out what it is. “You don’t know her name? You’ve never met her before, right, Eridan?”

“I don’t _think_ so,” he says, cautious.

“Okay,” Karkat says. “Okay. It’s probably nothing. Your brain is just fucking weird, how many times do I have to tell you, Ampora, you’re a fucked-up kid. You’re probably just sexually deprived. You need a girlfriend or something.”

“Yeah,” agrees Jade. “And you need to spend less time at work. And visit us more.”

“Not _too_ much more. But yeah, tell us this shit, okay?”

Eridan shakes his head. “You guys are actin’ weird again.”

Jade sighs, long and slow, her hair fluttering in the slipstream of her breath. “So are you.”

“Yeah, guess you got a point.”

He knows that they care, though. That’s nice. They’re the closest thing he has to family. He really wants to take Jade up on her offer and maybe move into their apartment for a week, just so he can be babied and fussed over by her for a little longer, but Karkat is beginning to look less worried and more frustrated with him, and Eridan decides that he might not want to overstay his welcome after all.

“I should probably get back,” he says, standing up abruptly. “Don’t wanna ruin your mornin’ with any more fuckin’ revelations or whatever. But, uh, I’ll visit more, I promise. An’ I’ll stop callin’ you in the middle a’ the night. Sorry about that, Kar.”

“You’re still an incredibly incompetent asslord,” Karkat tells him, but it isn’t venomous like usual. “Text me, okay?”

“An’ you’re my best friend. Thanks for sharin’ your girlfriend. Thanks for breakfast, Jade.” He kisses her on the cheek and hugs Karkat briefly, long enough to feel Karkat’s hand pat his back comfortingly and ruffle his hair, and Eridan’s forced to pull away before it gets too mussed. “See you, fuckwit,” Karkat says.

His apartment feels a little less empty when he gets back, and Eridan resolves not to touch the liquor cabinet for at least the rest of the weekend. The visit _had_ helped in a strange, roundabout way, and not just the one to Jade and Karkat’s apartment; the moment at the park, no matter how confusing and painful and bizarre it had been, was important, too. He just couldn’t figure out how yet.

Eridan knows his next step, though. He’s not giving up on her. He’s going to find out her name if it kills him.


	4. chapter 3

_someone take these dreams away_

_that point me to another day_

 

chapter 3

“Listen. You need to get out more.”

Eridan tugs open the refrigerator, cradling his phone to his ear with his shoulder while he reaches for the milk. “ _Kar,”_ he says, exasperated. “I am, okay? I went out with Nep an’ her roommate the other night, an’ that was enough social interaction for me, thank you very much.”

“Yeah,” says Karkat. Eridan can hear the amusement in his tone. “I know. You told me already, fuckhead. But really, Eridan, when was the last time you went out with a girl? _Alone?_ ”

He slams the refrigerator door and turns back to his coffee. “Are you askin’ me about my datin’ life? Really?”

“Fucking christ, no need to get so defensive, shitbag.”

There’s static on the other end of the line, and a girl’s voice saying “you’re doing it all wrong, let _me_ talk to him, he’s never going to agree this way--” Eridan listens, amused, to the hushed argument, and then Karkat says curtly “I’m putting you on with Jade, here— _Hi,_ Eridan!”

“Hi, Jade,” he says, and laughs.

Jade’s excited smile is almost audible through the speaker. “What Karkat was _trying_ to say is that I have a friend I want you to meet,” she says. Eridan sits down at the kitchen table and sips languidly at his coffee. “I think you’d get along with her really well.”

“You’re tryin’ to set me up on a blind date,” he accuses.

“I never said that!” she exclaims. “But I mean, if that’s what you want it to be, she _is_ single…”

He laughs. “God, Jade, you’re a piece a’ work.”

“So?”

“What’s your friend’s name?” he asks.

“Feferi,” Jade offers immediately. “Nothing else, though. It’s going to be a _blind_ date, emphasis on the blind. But she’s free this Friday night if you are. You really should take her out, Eridan, she’s nice; you need someone nice. You’ll like her, I promise.”

“I’m fine on my own,” he says, but he’s not completely opposed to the idea. It’s not like he would have a hard time meeting girls on his own if he actually tried, but—still. _Feferi._ That’s a pretty name, he thinks, and it’s worth a try; it can’t hurt him.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll go on a date with your friend, Jade. We’ll see what happens.”

It’s been just about forever since Eridan has taken a girl out. He’s not sure he remembers exactly how it works, if he’s being honest with himself—does he pick Feferi up, or do they meet at the restaurant? Should they even _go_ to a restaurant, or is that too serious for a blind date; should they just meet at a bar instead? But what if she doesn’t drink? Not knowing her at least takes some of the pressure off. Jade and Karkat are right, anyhow; he _does_ need more social interaction. Eridan is determined to show this Feferi a good time. He is _Eridan Ampora,_ after all, and they’re in New York City, and he needs a night to relax and have fun and talk to a pretty girl that isn’t his best friend’s girlfriend or his secretary for once.

He has Nepeta call in a reservation at an upscale restaurant-bar on Fifth Avenue and passes the address on to Jade for her mystery girl, and then spends the rest of the week in a state of hopeful torment.  A blind date doesn’t mean much, he tells himself constantly; he doesn’t even know who Feferi is, much less if they have anything in common, if she’s smart or pretty or funny or captivating. It’s a trial run, practice to get him back into dating. He can’t dwell on it too much. And yet Eridan’s mind keeps slipping back to it in moments of boredom, when his eyes are fuzzy from staring too long at a computer screen and his wrists ache from typing.

At least it’s driven the thoughts of the other girl from his head.

Eridan’s not sure how he feels about that. He hasn’t had a memory in a few days now, which he supposes is good; he knows he should be thankful. But he also misses her in a strange, fucked-up way. She’s still a floating mystery in the back of his mind, a knot that he needs to untangle to find some semblance of peace, and he very nearly wishes that she would come back just once, just for a little while, when he’s alone and lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling and trying to force his eyes to close. She’s not entirely gone; Eridan can still feel her there, that space in his brain where somebody is supposed to fit. But she’s not there when he wants her or needs her. And he still doesn’t know her name. He’s not sure if he wants her to return or for Feferi to drive her out completely.

He stays in the office late on Friday, trying to finish a report he was supposed to have done three days ago before the weekend comes around. It’s mind-numbingly boring, busy work that makes him want to scream or sleep or just stab his eyes out so he has an excuse to leave, and he gets distracted, lost in legal jargon and fine print. It’s dark outside when Nepeta eventually comes into his office, her steps light and cautious on the carpet.

“Mr. Ampurra, it’s six forty-five,” she tells him.

“Already?” Eridan mumbles. He doesn’t look up; his neck is cricked from staring at the screen for too long.

“You have a meeting scheduled for seven o’clock.”

His head jerks up, and his neck shoots fire up into the base of his skull. “Shit. _Shit._ ”

Eridan slams his laptop closed and grabs his jacket, runs a hand through his hair, snatches his cell. He has three missed calls, two from Jade, one from Karkat. “Fuckin’ hell, Nep. Shit, I look like a mess. Am I gonna make it in time?”

“I’ll hail you a taxi,” Nepeta says, and bites her lip. “Have fun,” she adds. “It’s a date, right?”

“Yeah. One a’ Jade’s friends from college, I guess. Aw, shit, I don’t wanna be late, she’ll think I’m a douchebag, christ I hate this job,” he mutters. His reflection in the window is messy and tired; his hair is a rats’ nest, and he has bags under his eyes. He loosens his tie.

“Oh.” Nepeta straightens and tightens it again. “Good luck, then. I hope it goes well.”

“Yeah, me too.”

By some miracle, the taxi manages to make it to Fifth Avenue on time, and Eridan thanks the cabbie profusely. He rolls the sleeves of his work shirt up and slings his sports jacket over one shoulder, trying to make it look like he hadn’t just come straight from work, and hopes that Feferi isn’t a total snob.

The bar is dim inside, lit with neon purple and red lights, and filled with plush couches and tall bar stools and New York socialites in little black dresses and expensive ties. It’s the kind of place where Eridan fits in perfectly, or at least his public image does; he made a good call in choosing this place. It’s home territory for him.

He circles the room a couple times, trying to figure out how he’s supposed to tell who, exactly, Feferi is. Jade hadn’t told him anything except that she was his age, and in an urban hot-spot for people his age, that isn’t much help. Every girl here could be her. They all look the same: red-lipped, blank-faced, and filled with the same silent, hidden desperation that such bars seem to attract. Here, it’s a little more toned-down; here, the men buy them cocktails and ply them with pretty words instead of the cheap beer that’s typical of less upscale establishments, but it’s the same pattern everywhere in the city. Depressed and tired of staring into a thousand variations of the same sad, dead face over and over, Eridan ends up at the bar eventually, leaning on the wooden counter and watching out for any girls that look just the slightest bit lost.

It takes a few more minutes before he sees her. A girl in a fuchsia dress with long, wavy hair, petite and lovely, walks in the door and dusts the snow from her jacket before handing it to the doorman; Eridan knows he’s found her from the way she looks around uncertainly afterwards, hoping for an explanation to materialize. He pushes off the bar and goes to meet his date.

“Hey,” he says when he reaches her, and she looks up, startled. “Are you Feferi? Jade’s friend?”

Feferi’s smile is easy and radiant; it takes over her whole face, reaching up to her forehead and lighting her up. “That’s me,” she says. “Your name is Eridan, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Eridan Ampora, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Feferi Peixes.” She giggles when they shake hands, and the sound is both juvenile and endearing in a strangely intoxicating way. Eridan thinks that he’s going to like Feferi.

They skip drinks and head straight to dinner, much to Eridan’s relief. He could really do with one, but he knows that it’ll just fuck him up, and there’s too much riding on this date; it’s been too long, and he’s already too nervous. Being drunk isn’t going to solve anything.

He pulls Feferi’s chair out for her, and she gives him another one of her brilliant smiles, which he is growing to like. They’ve got a great table, right next to a floor-to-ceiling window affording them an incredible view of the skyline of downtown Manhattan, and it’s almost like they’re floating above the city lights. It’s romantic; it’s metropolitan. It’s good. It makes Eridan a little more confident. He’s doing well.

“So, what do you do?” Feferi asks after they order. She looks genuinely interested: her face is open and engaged, her eyes sparkling. They’re pretty, too, just like the rest of her, bright and luminous, such a light shade of blue that they’re almost purple.

Eridan clears his throat. “I’m a corporate manager up at CrockerCorp,” he says. “Lotsa hours, kinda stressful. But it’s good. What about you?”

“I’m in grad school at NYU right now, actually! That’s where I met Jade. She was in a freshman intro to writing course with me, and she was _really_ sweet, always helping me out with homework! We really hit it off, and then she met Karkat, so we didn’t have time to hang out as much—but we’re still _great_ friends.”

Feferi is excitable. Eridan wonders if Feferi gets this excitable about everything. She talks fast and loud, her movements exaggerated. Either she really likes Jade, or she’s always this exuberant; Eridan doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to deal with all that energy. He can try, though. Feferi is also very happy, and God knows he needs someone so unequivocally happy in his life right now.

“What are you studyin’?”

“Marine biology.” Feferi blows her cheeks up like a pufferfish and lets the air out in a long, steady stream. “I want to live by the ocean! It’s fascinating, don’t you think? I _love_ fish, and whales, and all kinds of aquatic things, really. I always have.”

“The ocean is great,” says Eridan, and he means it. “When I was little, my family had this beach house up in Montauk, an’ we always used to go up there, an’ I loved swimmin’ so much. Even in winter, I always went swimmin’. I haven’t been to the ocean in—god, it’s been forever.”

“We could go sometime,” she offers. “Maybe you could take me up there, I’ve never been to Montauk! Or we could go to this other little town on Long Island, I did some studies there last summer and it’s really beautiful. It’s called Woodmere, have you heard of it? You can hear the ocean every morning when you wake up. That was my favorite part, I think.”

Eridan’s glad when their drinks and appetizers arrive. He’s dangerously close to the verge of falling in love with the girl without even meaning to.

But while they sip at their drinks—Cosmopolitan for Feferi, scotch for Eridan—and make small talk about the sea and their childhoods and New York, his head begins to hurt in a way that’s unbearably familiar. _God,_ he thinks, _not now, no, not fuckin’ now, everythin’ is finally goin’ right, no, please just not now._

He holds on as hard as he can. He focuses in on Feferi’s words, on her small, round, glowing face, on her faceted eyes, on her full lips moving a mile a minute. The flash is so brief at first that he barely catches it, bursting in and out of his vision quickly and seamlessly, painting over Feferi’s face for just a single second with another one, shockingly similar, all too different. Red lips, brown eyes, curlier and messier hair.

Eridan shakes his head vigorously and takes a long sip of his drink, savoring the feeling of the alcohol blazing through his mouth and down his throat, wishing it could burn up the part of his mind where she lives too. Feferi hadn’t noticed his shudder, thankfully; small mercies, he thinks.

He can make it through. He’s _going_ to make it through; he’s not going to let it fuck up the whole night. He likes Feferi. He is going to make it work.

“So what are you planning on doing after grad school, then?” he asks, throwing himself back into the conversation with a vengeance. “Not stayin’ in New York City, right? Can’t imagine there’s much water around here to study ‘sides the river.”

She nods vigorously. “I think I’m going to move out to Long Island permanently. There are a few research places out there that I’ve visited, and they’re really cool!  I’d like to work with them on environmental research, I think.”

There are not a lot of opportunities for a business major in Long Island, Eridan thinks.

“I always thought livin’ by the ocean would be great,” he says.

His headache is much worse by the time their food comes. In an effort to drown it out, he orders another scotch and gulps it down quickly, savoring the liquid fire and its magic numbing powers. He doesn’t know how the food is; he can’t taste anything through the strong liquor, but his vision sharpens a little, the edges of Feferi’s face get clearer, the lights brighten, and it’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make. He’s not hungry, anyway; he picks at the food, too expensive for how much they got, and watches Feferi take dainty bites between words. She carries the conversation for him, which is another small mercy; he’s not sure he has the coherency to do it himself. The edges of his vision are always threatening to collapse in. It’s by sheer willpower that he holds himself fully in the present. It’s a constant struggle; it would be so satisfying to give in, to let memories envelope his senses once again, but Eridan pushes back with everything he has.

Throughout it all, he manages to realize that he really does like Feferi. She’s exactly what he had hoped she would be like: kind, funny, and intelligent, and a happy, light soul, someone that could hold him up, or at least throw him a rope for him to pull himself to shore. He’s needed someone to save him. He doesn’t know what it says about him that after one date, he’s thinking that it’s going to be her.

The night is too short, and it’s too long. Feferi gets dessert; Eridan gets a third drink. He’s getting light-headed. Feferi is blurring, shaking in and out of focus, and _she_ is there too, momentary brown eyes, fleeting red lips. Eridan wants to stop trying.

“Fef,” he says weakly. “I can call you Fef, right?”

“Yeah, of course!” Feferi says—brightly, just like she says everything else.

“Fef, I—oh, _shit._ ”

He should’ve known. He should’ve realized that trying to hold it off would only make it worse.

The memory snaps in so quickly and cleanly that he becomes disoriented, dizzy, forgets where he is, and then he looks up, _and she is sitting there in her brown-eyed glory, shining, radiant, beautiful, right across from him at that very table, in that very restaurant._

_“When I was in Egypt,” she is saying, her impossibly crimson mouth framing the words perfectly. “I was studying ancient civilizations there during junior year. We visited an excavation site.”_

_“Yeah? I’ve always thought history’s kinda cool—but I mean, you knew that, yeah? I loved it in high school—never really had time for it in college, though, y’know how it is. What kind of music do you like?”_

_Eridan is_ talking _to her, but he’s not saying the words, they’re emerging fully-formed, and he’s not wholly in his body; he doesn’t have control, at least. He’s present, but there’s someone else controlling his mouth. He strains to speak, but it’s like trying to push a mountain: pointless and futile._

_“The Smiths, Joy Division, The Cure, all that post-punk kind of stuff. And Death Cab for Cutie, I went to see them with a friend the other weekend, and Snow Patrol is great…”_

_“I love The Cure,” says Eridan. “I love Snow Patrol. Wow.”_

_He’d thought, when he first met her, that Feferi’s smile was beautiful. He had thought that Feferi’s smile was brilliant; he had thought that Feferi’s smile was the best smile he had ever seen. But it’s a mere shadow now. This girl’s smile, her perfect, red-lipped, symmetrically arching smile, her eyes, her bright, lovely eyes, crinkled in surprise and genuine joy—this is a smile that he will never forget for as long as he lives._

_“Aradia,” he says._

Aradia.

Eridan is struck by something hard and cold, straight in the center of his chest, and then he is falling back, wind rushing by his ears so loudly that he thinks he just might go deaf, and everything is very dark.

Somebody says his name, but it is not her voice—not _Aradia’s_ voice. He gasps as he comes back into himself, the restaurant swimming blurrily back into view. Feferi looks worried. Eridan feels as if he had been drowning and was pulled from the water at the very last possible second.

“I’m sorry,” he says hastily, and stands up. His brains are sloshing around in his head in a way that he’s sure is not at all healthy. “I gotta—I’ll be back in a minute.”

Eridan stumbles his way into the bathroom. It’s empty, to his immense relief, and he folds himself over the polished steel counter, running the water as cold as it will go.

_Aradia. Aradia. Aradia._

He cups the liquid ice in his hands and throws it over his face, down his neck, trying to cool his flaming cheeks and quench the fire raging in his skull. His head is an inferno.

_Her name is Aradia._

Eridan instinctively knows this is true in the way that he knows that the face in the mirror is his own. He knows it like he knows that every thing that he’s seen in his mind has to be true somehow, that Aradia is real, that she is _somewhere_ maybe close, even _here,_ in this city. He knows that her name is supposed to be part of his life. It’s etched into the folds of his brain so deeply that he doubts it will ever go away.

He breathes deeply, in-out in-out, and comes down slowly. His shoulders sag inwards, and his head droops down, away from the mirror, away from the strung-out, drunk, fucking insane boy in the reflection. Eridan feels like he might faint or burst into tears.  He’s not sure which would be worse.

The water is running so cold that it feels like it’s burning him. Eridan cups more of it in his hands and splashes it over his face, numbing his skin, getting some of it in his mouth so that his teeth ache, and when he is finally steady enough to stand straight again and his face is not red-hot with anxiety and confusion, he rubs vigorously at his eyes and replaces his glasses and dries his face, then exits the bathroom, trying to exert apathy, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Feferi is waiting at the table patiently, toying with the straw in her drink. She looks up and smiles gently when Eridan sits back down.

“Do you feel alright?” she asks.

He nods and swallows down a surge of sourness in his throat. “Yeah. Just a little stressed, kinda overworked, y’know.”

She nods and looks appropriately sympathetic and Eridan is struck with a sudden wave of sadness. He is sad that he will never be able to love this girl the way that she deserves to be loved. He wants to be hers’; he wants her to save him so desperately that he’s almost sick with it. But he will never be able to fall in love with Feferi Peixes properly, at least not until he finds out who Aradia really is and what she has to do with his life.

They take a taxi back to her apartment. She lives downtown, in the heart of the city, with a couple roommates. Eridan doesn’t meet them. He walks Feferi up to her landing, holds all the doors for her like a perfect gentleman, smiles and laughs and hugs her goodbye. He does not kiss her. Feferi seems to accept this without much surprise. Something softens in her eyes when they pull out of the short but tight embrace, and she brushes her lips across his cheek and says “take care of yourself, Eridan.”

Eridan says “It’s been fun, Fef. I’ll see you around,” and she smiles kind of sadly and says “I hope so. You’re a good guy.” Then she closes the door behind her with a final-sounding _bang_ and Eridan is left with a cold, empty hallway, and the uncomfortable feeling that everybody else knows something that they are purposely keeping from him.

The taxi ride back to his own apartment is long and quiet. Outside the car, it starts to rain softly, raindrops pattering against the roof of the cab. Eridan watches the water make patterns on the glass, the drops sliding into each other and colliding, then trailing down the window slowly, fighting gravity every inch of the way. The lights of the city are hazy and distorted through the downpour. They blur into spots of neon, star-burst-shaped, fuzzy, and when he closes his eyelids they stay there, burned into his retinas.

It’s cold, and Eridan doesn’t have an umbrella. He dashes for his apartment when the cab lets him out onto the empty street, the collar of his coat pulled up high against the driving rain, and his fingers are so numb from the cold that he has to press in his code three times before he gets it right and stumbles into the lobby, his hair a wet mess and his feet swimming in sub-zero lakes inside his shoes.

His apartment is cold, too, but it’s familiar, and as soon as Eridan closes the door behind him, he slumps down in the entry hall, sloshing rainwater all over the tiles. He holds a hand up to his eyes. It’s trembling slightly—whether from the cold or nerves or the alcohol, he doesn’t know.

Eridan needs another drink.

He shouldn’t, he knows he shouldn’t, but his eyes are so heavy, and his throat is so dry, and Aradia’s name won’t leave his mind, like a melody he can’t get out of his head no matter how hard he tries. He’s out of Jack Daniels— _fuck, does nothing ever go right_ —but in the very back of the cabinet, there’s Smirnoff vodka, which he never remembers buying or drinking. He takes a long gulp anyway. The burn is so comfortingly familiar that he groans and slumps down on the couch, shoes and all, a wet, messy pile of sludge and confusion.

His hands feel so heavy. He can’t even reach for the television remote or find the light switch. Instead, he watches the city lights in the dark, watches as they blink into existence and then back out, and at some point he thinks he must fall asleep, but he’s not too sure. All he knows is that he spends the rest of the night with Aradia’s face swimming on the backs of his eyelids.


	5. chapter 4

_i've been looking so long at these pictures of you_

_that i almost believe that they're real_

 

chapter 4

Eridan spends the next week in a maniacal haze, throwing himself into his work hard enough that he drives Aradia’s face out of his mind for most of the time. He crams his work schedule full of meetings and reports; he spends his nights with Karkat and Jade or Nepeta or on the couch either too drunk or too tired to think properly. The only time he lets himself remember is when he’s trying to fall asleep, and even then, he protests thought as hard as he can. It’s only on the nights when he’s so worn down that he can barely form coherent sentences that his defenses drop of their own accord and he finds himself with her in her head, completely against his will.

Karkat and Jade are marginally less worried about him now, which nearly makes the disastrous date worth it; and Feferi’s keeping in contact with him, at least. She texted the morning after the date, but Eridan was too hungover to read it until late that night when he’d finally sobered up, at which point his suspicions were confirmed: he was never going on a second date with her. Her message was brief, but amiable; she’d had fun, maybe they could hang out again sometime, he was a nice guy and she’d enjoyed talking to him. No promise of another night, just a murky, indefinite suggestion of maybe seeing each other in the future. The _just as friends_ went unspoken.

He found himself caring less about it than he thought he would. Maybe it’s because he was already sure it wasn’t going to work out; maybe it’s because he didn’t _really_ want Feferi as more than a friend, anyway. But he was surprisingly, confusingly, relieved by the text and the amount of pressure it removed from his shoulders. He didn’t have a commitment to anyone. He wasn’t doing anything wrong by thinking about Aradia. He wasn’t going to hurt anyone but himself. Admittedly, the ideal situation would be if he didn’t think about her anymore at all and just got on with his fucking life, but he’s just about given up on that ever happening.

He’s dealing with it, though. He’s dealing with it the only way that he knows how.

And he’s been okay for a while. He gets along, and he eats enough and sleeps enough to satisfy Jade and works enough to satisfy his boss and stays busy enough to satisfy himself. It’s a delicate balance; sometimes, in the dead space, Eridan feels himself slipping into something eerily similar to depression. But he always manages to pull himself back at the last second.

Inevitably, though, the day comes where Jade calls again, and tells him again that he needs to get out more, that he’s locking himself up, that she and Karkat want him to come out to a party the next night at their friend’s place. Eridan’s initially able to hold her off; he cites work, meetings, tiredness, until she finally gives up. Then Feferi texts him an hour later, and he sees that it’s a double-pronged attack: she is inviting him to the same party, apparently at the apartment of a girl named Terezi that both she and Jade know from college. Eridan says no; Feferi persists; Jade calls back; and finally he has to cave under the constant pressure of two very exuberant girls who are both very needlessly worried about him.

Eridan doesn’t want to go to a party. He can’t remember the last time he went to a party. They’re always a waste of time. The ones he went to in college were pointless and embarrassing, filled with unabashedly smashed frat boys and nearly-naked girls that didn’t know any better. Eridan thought he was above that back then. Now, he just doesn’t feel like putting in the effort. He’s not likely to know anyone there; his social life is contained to the very small bubble formed by his work colleagues, Jade and Karkat, and a select few old friends from his own university. Even if he does go, he’s going to be with Feferi all night and he can’t be sure that things won’t get awkward because of their failed date, and Jade and Karkat are going to be off socializing with their friends, and there is nothing that Eridan hates more than being left alone at a party where he knows exactly no one.

But at the same time, there’s something attractive about the prospect of meeting new people. His _real_ life has to start sometime. Eridan’s been existing in a gray space for the past two years, stuck between living and insentience. When he goes home after work, he ceases to exist. Maybe, if he gets his ass off the couch and the liquor bottle out of his hand, he can start living— _really_ living—again. It’s worth a try, at least.

It’s with a sense of leery trepidation that he gets ready for the party. It’s in an apartment in the Lower East Side; very trendy, very upscale. The girl’s an aspiring lawyer, apparently. This makes Eridan distrust her before he’d even met her. Growing up, his house had been full of lawyers and politicians, brushing up against each other in their sleek suits, in a constant competition to out-smarm each other at every turn. His own dad had been the head of that repulsively phony scene; he had the most money, the biggest company, the most influence, the prettiest trophy wife. (They divorced when Eridan was two. He never saw her again.) Eridan looks back on his adolescence as a particularly greasy stain on his personal mythology. There’s a very good reason he barely ever talks to his father anymore.

Hopefully Terezi’s a different kind of lawyer, though. Maybe she’s not just in it for the money; maybe she truly does have an interest in crime and justice. Eridan can always avoid her if she gets too stuck-up for him. After dealing with all the bullshit he goes through at work, after all, it can’t be any worse than business-company politics.

Eridan goes into it with an open mind. He makes an effort with his appearance, he really does. He goes home on time from work and everything to get ready. He can’t remember putting this much thought into his clothes and hair for a while now; recently, he’s skipped over his careful preening and given up his meticulous color-matching schemes. He’s mostly been throwing on the first things he touches in the morning and quickly shaving if he’s feeling ambitious. There’s no one for him to impress at work; they’ve all seen him tired and strung-out the night after a big project or an important meeting, not to mention fucked-up and hungover after a particularly lonely night. Even with Feferi, he hadn’t had a chance to make a good first impression. He wants to get off on the right foot with anyone he might meet at the party.

Eridan irons a shirt and a pair of tight jeans and pulls a black cardigan around him to ward off the late January chill and combs his hair, making the dyed-purple streak that still hasn’t grown out stand up straight in front, and shaves and polishes his glasses and stares at himself in the mirror. He’s not excited, exactly, but somewhere deep in the recesses of his irises, there’s a glint of the potential for enthusiasm. He hopes he’s coming back out of whatever hole he’d dug himself into. Meeting Feferi had helped. Maybe a party would help even more. He has faint memories of a few he’d sort of enjoyed in the past; maybe this one will be somewhat entertaining, too. Maybe he’ll meet someone. Maybe he’ll stop having to think in maybes after tonight. 

When he rings the doorbell to Jade and Karkat’s apartment, Feferi answers the door. “Hey, Eridan!” she exclaims, and wraps her thin arms around his neck, hair tickling at the hollow of his throat. Eridan smiles and hugs her back. She looks pretty tonight; he wonders if he really did blow everything, or if there still might be a chance for him.

“Come in,” she says. “We’re nearly ready to go. Are you excited?”

“Yeah,” Eridan answers, and it’s really only half of a lie.

Jade’s flitting around the apartment, pulling on boots and running a brush through her hair while she calls “do you need anything to drink, Eridan?” down the hall. Karkat sits on the couch, watching the scene with an amused smirk.

“We haven’t seen Terezi in about forever,” he tells them. “She’s going fucking crazy.”

“Yeah, looks like it,” Eridan replies. He bumps Karkat’s shoulder jovially and sits down. “Anyone else I might know gonna be there?”

“Don’t think so,” he answers. “It’s all NYU people. Haven’t seen half of those douchewads since graduation, this is bound to be interesting. You’ll have fun, though. Terezi used to throw the most fucking insane parties. She doesn’t even seem like the party type at first, it’s hilarious, but she’s got friends in strange places. She’s pretty fucking strange, too.”

“She’s nice,” Feferi interjects.

Karkat snorts. “Depends on your definition of ‘nice.’”

Her apartment, certainly, is nice, and it’s in a nice part of town. The four of them take the subway to Grand Street, riding with the wave of businessmen and businesswomen heading home after long days at work, and when they exit the station, it’s dark out, the city smog hiding the winter stars. Terezi’s apartment complex is modern, urban, and minimalistic. Her apartment is huge.

Eridan hears the music from two floors away while they ride the elevator up, and he wonders how she hasn’t gotten a noise code violation yet. It certainly _sounds_ like a rager, at least from the music level; but at least it’s good music. When Karkat knocks on the door, someone flings it open, and the already-deafening music spills out into the hall.

“Kaaarkles! Jade! Feferi!”

Terezi is small and sharp all over: sharp elbows, sharp hipbones, sharp smile, sharp eyes behind sharp red glasses. She clutches a beer bottle precariously by the neck between two red-tipped fingers and throws her free arm around Karkat’s neck. “Glad you could make it! Come in already.”

Eridan hangs back and avoids eye contact with her. She seems enthusiastic, certainly, but she puts his teeth on edge, and he’s not completely sure why. Maybe it’s her predatory grin; maybe it’s the glasses, which obscure just enough of her eyes that he can’t tell if Terezi’s drunk or stone-cold sober. She’s faceted. She’s the kind of girl who hides secrets for a living. Eridan guesses that’s why she became a lawyer.

The inside of the apartment is a mess of sweaty bodies and flashing lights. The stereo speakers are huge, literally shaking the walls with the sound, and somehow a strobe light got strapped up to the ceiling so that red and purple lights are thrown periodically over the thrashing crowd. It’s practically a rave. Terezi goes hardcore, apparently. Eridan gains a little bit of respect for her. She’s got balls; this is the kind of party where people get driven to the hospital to get their stomachs pumped the morning after.

Jade immediately runs off like Eridan knew she would, pulling Karkat after her, spotting some old friend in the crowd. Feferi’s more faithful, though; she waves exuberantly at people, but she places a gentle hand on Eridan’s arm and moves through the crowd more slowly, making sure he sticks with her.

“Terezi likes parties,” Feferi says. “She gets a little freaky sometimes. She’s normal during the day, though, I swear. I think she just likes to watch other people get wasted and laugh at them.”

“Really?” Eridan knew there was a reason that he instinctually distrusted her.

The table acting as the bar is off to the side of the room, across from the massive speakers and next to the floor-to-ceiling window giving a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline. This apartment must cost a fucking ton. Even Eridan doesn’t think he could afford it. It’s an amazing place, though; he steps up to the window for a second and presses his nose against the cool glass, watching the lights wink back at him.

Feferi pushes a beer into his hands, and Eridan takes a grateful swig. Under the seizure-inducing lights, she looks almost unreal, the shadows in her face deepening until he can barely see her eyes. Her teeth gleam bright red. “Do you want to dance?” she asks.

“I ain’t one for dancin’,” protests Eridan. “You should, though.”

“You sure?” Feferi’s lips curve down at the corners, but Eridan can already see her hips twitching to the synthesized beat, her foot tapping almost imperceptibly against the floor.

“Yeah, a course. Go have fun, Fef. I’ll wait here, yeah?”

“Yeah, okay! I’ll be back soon, I promise!” She flits away, disappearing into the thick crowd, and before he knows it she’s been swallowed up by the bodies swaying in unison with a flick of her long black hair. Eridan watches her go fondly.

Jade and Karkat are long gone, but he doesn’t feel too bad about letting Feferi go. He can stand by this window all night and watch the skyline. It won’t be too bad, as long as he has beer and the city. He can see the river from here. It’s long and sinuous, curving back on itself occasionally, a flowing spine connecting the vertebrae branching off from the center, and Eridan watches the boats move along sluggishly until he’s finished his beer and his limbs feel a little looser. Someone’s smoking pot in here; he can taste the smoke on his tongue, and it’s relaxing, reminiscent of high school.

He goes to get another beer and stands against the wall, hand in his pocket, eyes on the crowd.  Right, this is why he always used to hate parties so much. Without realizing it, he’s reverted into his college self: when sober, he can’t let go of his inhibitions, and he sticks to the edge, unwilling to put the effort into meeting new people. Once he gets some alcohol in him, he’ll probably loosen up. He’ll become funny. He’ll be able to socialize without making a fool of himself. People can say what they want about alcohol; for Eridan, it’s a social godsend.

The song switches to The Cure, and he taps his foot and smiles. His eyes glide over the crowd, back to the window, back to the city. Now there’s a girl standing next to it where he was a few minutes ago. She’s alone, like him, and still; she’s got a bottle of beer between two fingers, dangling from her hand, and her face is silhouetted in profile by the lights of the skyline outside the window. Eridan watches her curiously, interested to find another person at the party who’s perfectly content with not dancing. She’s drumming the fingernails of her free hand against her thigh in time to the beat; she’s wearing a short skirt and a big red sweater and Doc Martens that look like they could smash someone’s face in, her hair loose and wild.

As if she feels his gaze, she turns to look at Eridan, and the lights flash over her face, painting her in streaks of red and purple.

Eridan’s heart stops.

He’s got Aradia’s face down to a science now, every detail of it recorded on his cerebral lobe, and now as he runs a cross check of this girl’s face against the one stored away in his mind, every detail begins to match up: full red lips, pale cheeks scattered with freckles, snub nose, sparkling brown eyes. She’s sultry and enigmatic, lovely and mysterious, and Eridan tells himself that he’s finally gone insane, that there’s no fucking way, that Aradia’s not even real.

Before he even realizes what he’s doing, his feet are moving and then he’s standing in front of the girl, running a hand through his hair nervously with his heart stuffed somewhere in the vicinity of his throat.

“Hi,” he says, and there’s no fucking doubt in his mind about who she is.

She looks up from under her long black lashes, her irises mahogany, just like he knew they would be this close up. “Hi,” she says. “Do I know you?”

“No,” Eridan says, “but I think I know you. Aradia, right?”

“Yeah,” she says. She doesn’t smile. One eyebrow arches up in a silent question.

“I—I’ve seen you,” he says breathlessly. “I’ve had dreams about you.”

She gives a mirthless little laugh and turns away. “Not tonight. Sorry, buddy.”

“No, I swear I’m not tryin’ to hit on you, I’m not jokin’,” he continues recklessly. “Aradia. I know you. I’m not tryin’ to be creepy, really.”

“Try harder, then, because that’s sort of how it’s coming off right now.”

She rolls her eyes. Eridan swallows thickly. _Why is he such a fucking imbecile?_

“I love The Cure,” he says, a little helplessly. “An’ Joy Division an’ The Smiths. I love this song. Do you like it?”

“Who doesn’t?” She smiles now, but only slightly, a wry little curve at one side of her red lips. Under her breath, she sings “ _I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you,_ ”

Eridan grins and joins in for the next line, and Aradia smiles a bit more. “I still think you’re a creep,” she tells him, but her eyes are glimmering with contained laughter. “Did you honestly think that was going to work? ‘I’ve _dreamed_ about you?’ That’s not even a funny pick-up line, it’s like something out of a bad teenage vampire movie.”

“I wasn’t thinkin’,” he says truthfully. “I kind of suck at this whole social-interaction thing. I haven’t had enough to drink.”

“Tell me about it.” Aradia lifts the bottle to her lips and throws her head back, gulping down the last of her beer and dropping the empty on top of the speaker. “You couldn’t pay me enough to come to one of these on my own.”

“Yeah? Why are you here?”

“I have the misfortune of living with Terezi Pyrope,” she says with a small smirk.

The buzz that’s filled Eridan’s mind for as long as he can remember fades out the longer he stares at her face, and he’s left in something like an HD version of the world, everything suddenly clearer, a veil of cling film lifted off from his eyes. The million little voices leave his ears; the filter drops from his vision, making everything brighter. The world is clearer; something is shifting in his brain, and he feels almost new.

“So why are you here?” she asks.

Eridan blinks. “Uh, couple a my friends brought me. Karkat an’ Jade an’ Feferi. They knew Terezi from college.”

Aradia nods slowly, bobbing her head in time with the music. “So you and Fef, huh? You’re the flavor of the month?”

“What? No—“

“Oh.” Aradia raises an eyebrow. “A surprising development. I shouldn’t have assumed, sorry.”

“It didn’t work out,” Eridan says. “I just—couldn’t. Not right now.”

“Let me guess, you’re not looking for a relationship.”

“Only if—“ Eridan stops himself before he blurts out _only if it’s with you._

Aradia leans toward him, her eyes conspiratorial. “It’s okay,” she murmurs confidentially. “That’s the way to do it, in my opinion. You’re smart—what’s your name?”

 _She doesn’t even know his name_.

The thought is so strangely unsettling that Eridan has to scramble for coherency. _Aradia doesn’t even know his name._ It’s not that he’s upset, per se—it’s just that there’s this achingly strong feeling that she needs to know his name, too, that it’s intrinsic to the laws of the universe or something.

“Hey, I get that you’re trying to be all deep and mysterious, but seriously. You can at least tell me your name, can’t you?” Aradia waves a hand in front of his face. “Or do you want me to call you Vampire Creep forever?”

“Eridan,” he blurts out. “I’m Eridan. Ampora.”

“Well, you’re smart, Eridan. Most of the time.”

“Thanks. I think.”

Aradia laughs then, and Eridan’s mind becomes awash with memory of that exact sound, heard a million different times for a million different reasons, always able to make his heart swell with happiness. It’s bell-toned and full, a real laugh, not just a polite chuckle; Aradia is not the type to laugh politely. She is raw and real, pure and incredible.

“You like parties, Eridan?”

“Not really,” he confides.

She snatches his beer from his loose grip and takes a long sip, head tipping back so that her throat is elongated; it’s hypnotic under the dim lights. “Yeah, me neither. Too bad Terezi loves them so much.”

“Why are you livin’ with her?”

Her eyebrows furrow slightly. “I need a place to stay for a while,” she says slowly. “While I get my shit together. It’s complicated.”

“That’s life.”

“Guess so.” Aradia offers him a smile. Eridan takes it gratefully, drinking it in, savoring it. In comparison, his memories pale to the real thing. “So, you like The Cure and Joy Division and The Smiths. I think I like _you._ ”

“Yeah?” Eridan’s heart is beating faster than it should.

“Yeah.”

The song ends, and she frowns and rolls her eyes. “Oh, well. Tez only played that cause I snuck it onto her playlist. What about The Postal Service? You know them?”

“Right, yeah, I love all a Ben Gibbard’s stuff.”

Aradia’s smile gets bigger. “You and me, Eridan Ampora, we’re kindred spirits.”

“You think?”

“Well, I never met anyone with better taste in music. That’s all that matters, right?”

Eridan tries to think of something witty, but he comes up blank; he’s still reeling from the realization that she is here, in front of him, that Aradia is flesh and blood and bone and not an evanescent wisp of his brain, and even if she was just a normal pretty girl he’s not drunk enough to flirt right as it is. He’s not funny enough, and he feels achingly inadequate; he desperately wishes he’d skipped that last beer and still had all his mental faculties about him.

He opens his mouth to say something—anything—but there’s movement behind Aradia, and then a coat rack of a guy comes up behind her and wraps an arm around her shoulders, possessive. He gives Eridan a _look_. Eridan’s stomach turns inside out.

“Hey, aa,” he says. “Who’s this?”

“Oh. Hey, Sollux.” Aradia reaches up and kisses him—fucking _kisses_ him, on the goddamn lips.

 _That’s not right_. It _can’t_ be right, that doesn’t make sense, it just doesn’t fucking compute. Aradia doesn’t kiss skinny douchebags named Sollux, that’s not the way it’s supposed to work.

“Sollux, this is Eridan Ampora. He is my musical kindred spirit and mostly smart.”

“Eridan Ampora?” Sollux has a strong lisp that makes him sound like a complete dick. He squints at Eridan in the dim light; his skin is pasty, like he gets maybe three days of sunlight a year. Eridan stares him down, defiant, because at least he’s not eight feet tall and a fucking size double zero and at least he doesn’t wear a goddamn Legend of Zelda t-shirt to a _party._

Sollux frowns at him, showcasing a full set of small, sharp, displeased teeth, and Eridan grimaces right back, because they are adults and they are not going to make high school drama out of this and he had done absolutely nothing wrong by talking to Aradia. It’s not his fault that she shows up in his dreams entirely too much.

“You’re not supposed to be talking to him,” Sollux says.

Oh, but that is the _last fucking straw._

“Hey, who are you to say who she should be talkin’ to?” exclaims Eridan. “She ain’t your property, you can’t tell her who to fuckin’ talk to.”

“She can’t talk to you,” Sollux says defiantly. “You had your chance, okay?”

“I met her _five fuckin’ minutes ago!_ ”

“Don’t be a dick, Sollux,” interjects Aradia. She wiggles her way out from under his arm. “And you—“ she rounds on Eridan— “are not as smart as I thought you were. Don’t pick fights at parties. Especially not over girls you just met. It isn’t going to get you anywhere in life.”

Sollux crosses his arms and looks smug.

“I know you’re smirking. Go away, Sollux, I’m mad at you right now.”

He doesn’t argue, which is good; Eridan probably couldn’t have contained himself if he did. He just slinks away and disappears off to whatever dark warren social rejects like him normally frequent.

“My boyfriend. Sort of,” Aradia says by way of explanation.

Eridan has the strange, desperate urge to ask _are you sure?_ She doesn’t look right with him—too lively, too substantial for such a wisp of a man. She’s going to break his frail little spine just by being near him. And while Eridan wouldn’t mind that so much, the point stands that Aradia is with Sollux and not _him,_ and that is not how it’s supposed to go, he knows it.

“Yeah, I know he comes off rude. He’s kind of a dick. But the good kind of dick. The kind that cares. And where am I going to find a better guy in this city, right?” Aradia laughs again, but not happy, not bell-toned; it’s more broken than that. “Five minutes and I’m pouring my relationship insecurities out to you. Eridan Ampora, I think you’re an empath or something. Am I right?”

“No,” Eridan says. “Just a good listener.”

“God, I’m so drunk right now.”

She looks it, too, eyes shiny and shallow, cheeks flushed too pink, though that might just be the heat of the people dancing a few feet away reflecting onto them. She has to lean against the wall to keep her balance, and suddenly Eridan has a quick flash of a memory, no more than a single frame: a cabinet full of alcohol, of vodka and gin and hard lemonade, the kind of shit he’d never drink. _Oh,_ he thinks.

“Are you gonna be okay?”

She rolls her eyes. “Look, that’s sweet, but I don’t need your help getting home. I’m a grown woman, okay? Not a little high school girl who just got wasted for the first time.”

“I’m just askin’.”

“Besides, I’m already home.” She laughs again, and now it’s just morose. “My life is so sad, Eridan. How did I end up like this?”

Eridan honestly wishes he knew, because he has a feeling that if he did, that would answer his questions right alongside hers’.

“I think you’d better leave now. Before I make any more embarrassing, inappropriately personal confessions. Not your fault. You seem like a good guy, Eridan.”

“I mean...”

“Yeah. Go.” Aradia waves a hand in front of her face and turns away. “I’ll go find Sollux. And get another beer. Sorry I took yours’.”

“It’s al—“

She stumbles off with whatever was left in his bottle, and all Eridan can do is watch her helplessly, feeling like his past, future, and the answer to everything he’s ever wanted to know just walked away from him, completely fucking smashed and the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen.


	6. chapter 5

_jesus christ that's a pretty face_   
_the kind you'd find on someone i could save if they don't put me away_   
_well it'd be a miracle_

chapter 5

Eridan doesn’t exactly get any sleep that night. He gets home sometime after two a.m. and crashes on the couch and watches nighttime infomercials for white noise, but try as he might, he can’t make himself feel as relieved as he thinks he should be. He knows that his curiosity should be alleviated; he knows that now that’s he’s seen her, seen that she’s got a life that doesn’t include him, one with a new boy who’s probably much smarter than him, he should stop thinking about her. What he absolutely shouldn’t be is more inquisitive about Aradia, and who she is and why he’s so supernaturally fucking sure that he _knows_ her from somewhere—from some _time._ For god’s sake, he didn’t even think to ask what her fucking last name is.

Headlights flash by outside, throwing shadows up and across the floor, and he thinks, somebody has to know her. If she’s living with Terezi, and Terezi is as close to Karkat and Jade as they say she is, then they have to know at least something about her. It makes Eridan somewhat uncomfortable to think that Aradia doesn’t belong solely to him, that there are other people who share her smile and voice and eyes, especially people who are so close to him. But it’s not nearly as strange as seeing her in real life, seeing her moving and talking and laughing and kissing as her own entity, not a part of his brain. He can’t shake the mental discomfort. The mystery isn’t going away any time soon.

He doesn’t mean to end up on Jade and Karkat’s doorstep unprecedented and ridiculously early for the second time that month, but they’re the first people he thinks of. He hopes he isn’t making a habit of it. Karkat answers the door this time, shirtless and with a hilarious case of bedhead, and Eridan can’t help but grin despite how odd the whole situation is.

“Hey, Kar,” he says. “I need to talk to you an’ Jade. Can I come in?”

Karkat rolls his eyes. “You’re not satisfied with just fucking up your own sleep schedule, you have to wreak havoc on ours’, too?”

“This is important,” Eridan says.

For some reason, Karkat does let him in. Eridan had nearly thought he wasn’t going to. Maybe there was something in his eyes. Jade is crashed at the kitchen table, her cheek pressed into the crease of a thick textbook.

“Bio exam tomorrow,” Karkat explains. Gently, he shakes Jade’s shoulder. “Hey, c’mon. Wake up.”

Jade rears up sleepily, her eyes half-shut and swollen with exhaustion. “Eridan?” she mumbles.

“Hey. Sorry.” Eridan runs a hand through his hair and generally feels like a dick.

“No, it’s okay.” Jade half-rises from her seat. “I’ll make—“

“You will stay where you are and make exactly jack shit,” Karkat says. “I’ll make coffee, and then this dickhead will explain what he’s doing here at the ass crack of dawn for the second time this month.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Eridan repeats.

Karkat makes really bad coffee, but it does the job, and besides, Eridan’s not here for a drink. He gets straight down to business, steepling his hands under his chin and leaning forward.

“Do you guys know anyone named Aradia?”

Karkat and Jade exchange a wary, highly suspicious glance.

“Bout this tall?” He gestures with one hand. “Crazy brown hair, big eyes, fuckin’ gorgeous as hell? Kinda sarcastic? Good taste in music?”

“Um,” Jade says. “Nope, doesn’t ring any bells.”

“Cause she lives in your friend Terezi’s apartment.”

“Terezi has a roommate?” Karkat says, and there’s a definite note of panic in his voice. “No! We didn’t know that! Really? For how long? What’s her name?”

Eridan stares at him.

Karkat blanches and shakes his head. “Right. Aradia. Yeah. Weird name, huh?” His laugh is nervous.

“Yeah,” Eridan says slowly. “Guess it is.”

Jade stares at him with wide, unfocused eyes for at least a full thirty seconds, and then abruptly says “Are you tired, Eridan? It’s really early. I’m tired.”

She’s intentionally avoiding his questions, and she’s not even trying to hide it. This is ridiculous. Something is going on—something on top of all the other shit Eridan’s still trying to get to the bottom of—and he doesn’t know if he has the time or energy to figure it out.

“So you don’t know her?” he asks. “Not even her last name?”

Karkat shakes his head quickly. “Never heard of her.”

“Could you ask Terezi, then? Only cause I was talkin’ to her at the party, an’ she was really cool an’ interestin’ an’ I didn’t get a chance to get her number.”

“Oh. Well, that’s a shame!” Jade exclaims.

“Can you call her?”

“She—uh—“ It’s obvious that Karkat is scrambling for words. “She’s probably not awake yet! Terezi gets really fucking grouchy in the morning. No way am I dealing with her this early. Hell no, I’m not fucking suicidal.”

“I can talk to her.”

“No!” he exclaims. “Christ, no, Eridan? Can you just—not? Okay? It’s too early for this shit, seriously!”

“What? What did I fuckin’ do?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to talk to Aradia, Eridan,” Jade finally says. She’s a sorry sight, her hair a tangled birds’ nest, the faint imprint of biomedical text leaving black words on her cheek, her big green eyes nearly panicked. “She’s not—she has a boyfriend.”

“So you _do_ know who she is?”

“Yes,” Jade says. “Yes, and you shouldn’t talk to her. I’m sorry. Please believe me on this, Eridan. I don’t want you to get hurt. Either of you.”

And she is desperately sincere, Eridan’s known her long enough to know when she is being so serious that she radiates with it. Jade is nothing if not truly invested in her friends’ well-being. Eridan thinks—he knows—that she knows more about Aradia than she is willing to tell him. But now he can’t push her for more, if she really thinks it’s for the best that he stays away from Aradia. He doesn’t agree one bit, but he has to respect that.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. I won’t call Terezi.”

Jade relaxes, tension draining from her exhausted shoulders. “Okay. Good. I mean—thank you for believing me.”

Karkat is silent during this exchange, watching them both, his eyes hard. He knows about this, too, but he is even less likely to give away information than Jade is. Eridan wishes his friends didn’t care so fucking much about his well-being for stupid reasons he doesn’t understand.

The air in the room is too thick, coalescing with tension, and he can’t stand it. “Well,” he says, “that’s all I came here to talk about.”

Maybe the strangest thing that’s happened all morning is that his words doesn’t even make Karkat the smallest bit mad. “Thought so,” he says. “Wanna stick around anyway?”

“Yeah. That sounds good,” Eridan answers fervently.

It’s a reprieve, sitting on the couch sandwiched between Karkat and Jade, watching Karkat’s horrible romantic comedies and laughing at the top of his lungs. It’s cathartic, medicinal. A proven fact: there is nothing quite like Hugh Grant or Jennifer Aniston to soothe a distraught mind.

He stays for a while, long enough that the sun rises fully over Manhattan and then falls a little lower, the clock tipping over into afternoon. He drinks innumerable cups of coffee and laughs and feels better, feels maybe actually happy for the first time in a long time, and it is such a good feeling. Eridan feels refreshed. He feels like he could do—not anything, but some things he couldn’t before; he can face the world again, which is nice, since he’d been hiding from it so insistently previously.

But then Jade has to go back to her books, and Eridan begins to feel like an intruder; he says his goodbyes, gives perfunctory hugs, and exits quietly, renewed, his battery charged. He decides what he is going to do next.

If nobody else will tell him anything about Aradia, he’s just going to have to do it himself.

In his head, Eridan composes a list of every place he’s ever remembered seeing her. It gets very long very quickly. He’s sure he’s forgetting some, too, but it’s a place to start—a lot of places to start, actually, and serendipitously, a number of them are close to where he is right now.

He begins in a record shop. It’s a literal hole in the wall, down a creaking flight of metal stairs to a basement space with only one front window, dusty and dark, and the moment he sets foot in the store, he nearly begins sneezing. But it’s a familiar scent—the dust is that of old records, passed through hundreds of sets of hands, played hundreds of times on hundreds of different turntables and scratched up with hundreds of different diamond-tipped needles. Eridan knows these places. He has rows upon rows of these kinds of records in his apartment, on shelves and in crates, so many that he doesn’t know where most of them come from anymore, though that could be chalked up to an entirely different explanation now.

He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, or what he’s expecting to get out of any of the places he’s planning to go, but that doesn’t matter so much. He’s tracing steps. He’s playing detective, hammering out an alibi, searching out any clues he can.

His feet trace their way to the J section by their own accord, and he stops when it feels right, and lo and behold, he has paused in front of the Joy Division records. Surely a sign, though of what, Eridan isn’t sure; he already knew she liked Joy Division. This is hardly news to him.

But she’s stood here, he thinks; surely she’s stood in this exact spot. There’s a connection between them, reaching back through time. She was here, too. Now there’s one more way they’re connected—one more tenuous string to tie them together.

So he stares, and he waits for something—anything—divine inspiration, another memory, at the very least a fucking hint that this is what he’s supposed to be doing—but there’s nothing, just white noise and the beginning of a headache forming behind his temple that’s getting more persistent with every continued moment he wastes with the record clutched in his too-tight grip, he gets frustrated after a while and bored of staring at the stupid black-and-white Joy Division album cover, and the other customers are giving him looks. Eridan really wants to flip them off. Instead, he goes up to the cashier.

“Hey,” he says.

The guy looks up. He’s young, college-age, a total coffee-shop kind of guy, with a beanie and an eyebrow ring and a tight t-shirt splattered with a pop-culture graphic design. Eridan thinks he’s supposed to know him; at least, the cashier definitely recognizes Eridan.

“Hey, man,” he answers with an easy smile that suggests familiarity. “Haven’t seen you here in a while.”

“Oh. I’ve been, um, busy.” Eridan doesn’t have the slightest idea what his name is. He hopes he’s not supposed to.

The guy’s smile morphs into a conspiratorial grin. “Yeah? With what?”

“The usual, uh, work…and stuff,” Eridan finishes lamely. “Hey, can I ask you somethin’?”

“We didn’t get that record in you were looking for.”

“Oh. No, not that.” Eridan laughs awkwardly. “Um, actually it’s about a person.”

“Yeah, okay, shoot.”

He clears his throat. “Okay. She’s ‘bout this tall, curly brown hair, gorgeous brown eyes. Likes The Cure and Death Cab for Cutie?”

The cashier raises a boggled eyebrow. “Dude. Your girlfriend?”

“My girlfriend?”

He laughs incredulously, but it’s covering up a slight note of panicked fear, and Eridan is both intrigued and regretful. “This is some serious _Attack of the Clones_ -type shit here. Yes, man, your _girlfriend,_ that chick you always came in here with every Saturday, clockwork-like? For, like, the past year?”

“Right. That girlfriend.”

This shit should not freak Eridan out anymore, not after everything else that’s happened. He should expect it by now. But here it is again, from a complete stranger: he was in a relationship for at least a year—probably more—and he has _no fucking recollection of it._ An entire year, at the very barest fucking minimum, completely gone. A year with Aradia—a year where they bought CDs together in SoHo every Saturday from a dusty basement store, a year where they did God knows what else that doesn’t even _exist_ to him, and he’s guessing not to her, either, unless she’s a professional fucking actress.

“Are you okay?” The cashier is leaning over the counter, sliding his thick plastic glasses down his nose to get a better look at Eridan. “Dude? Bad trip, or…?”

“Not a bad trip,” Eridan says weakly. “Just a little tired, I guess. Sorry about that.”

“Okay.” The cashier doesn’t trust it, Eridan can tell. But he also doesn’t ask any more questions. “Go home. Get some rest. Smoke a bowl, I dunno, that’s how I relax.”

“Yeah. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Eridan goes quickly. He doesn’t ask if the cashier knew Aradia’s last name.

 _So._ They were in a relationship. At this point, he had guessed as much, but that had only been in his head; but now there are other people who have seen them together. And yet nothing from Nepeta, and Karkat and Jade won’t offer any information, and even Feferi hadn’t mentioned it. Even Terezi at the party would have known, and she didn’t say anything.

And Aradia. Aradia seemed, if possible, even more clueless than he is. She didn’t know his name or his face or anything. Aradia remembers even less than him.

That’s the worst part about all of this, he thinks. He has _something_ —scattered memories, word of mouth—and she has nothing. She doesn’t have any inkling that he once could have been such a massive part of her life.

It’s wrong—it’s so wrong—she should remember everything, they both should, and Eridan doesn’t even know what he’s supposed to be _remembering,_ really. He just wants something. One answer. This whole trip was a disaster—he has a million more questions than he started the day with, and exactly zero fucking solutions.

He goes to Central Park. There’s no real reason for it; he just doesn’t know where else to go. There are people there this time, throwing snowballs and icicles and yelling, and the snow has begun to melt. It’s disgusting, a dirty, gray-brown slush by the footpaths; barely a single inch remains untouched.

The lake, though, is pristine as ever, albeit disfigured by scars from skates crisscrossing the glassy surface. Eridan sits down on his bench and stares, wishing the silvery lines would bend, would write themselves out into answers, wishing everyone else would go away so it could be quiet again, just him and the ice, wishing he had a drink. God _damn,_ what he would do for a bottle of whiskey right now.

He stares down at his hands and wonders how many times they’ve held hers, where else on her body they’ve been, what else they know that he can’t remember. They’re his hands, to be sure—fingers tipped red from the cold, fingernails short and rounded and disastrous nail beds littered with hangnails, callouses set thick on the sides of his thumbs—but they’re different now; they’ve done things that he doesn’t know about. His body has experienced so many things that he can’t understand. It doesn’t rightfully feel like _his_ anymore.

God damn, he’s too young for this. He can’t be having out of body experiences at twenty-five. That shit is for old ladies and people with multiple personality disorders, and up till now, he’s been completely fucking sane. Maybe he’s cracked. Maybe the pressure of work is getting to him. Maybe he should quit his job and go off on one of those life-changing trips around the world, meet a girl in Malaysia or Thailand or something, figure out how to un-break a heart that was never even properly broken, really, or wasn’t as far as he can remember.

Yeah, Malaysia. That sounds nice. He’s sure Karkat and Jade wouldn’t miss him for one year. And Malaysia’s warm, right? He’s fucking sick of winter, he can’t deal with snow any longer.

Somebody coughs, and the sound is disturbingly close to his ear. Eridan shudders and shifts farther down the bench, pressing himself into the wrought-iron bar on the side. He looks pointedly away, focusing his blank gaze out on the lake.

Whoever it is doesn’t take the hint, though, because moments later, there’s a soft _thump_ and the bench dips slightly under added weight. Eridan suppresses a groan.

“Hey,” his seat-mate says, and Eridan looks up.

Aradia’s sitting at the other end of the bench, back ramrod straight, snowflakes caught in her nest of chestnut hair. She’s looking at him with trepidation and enthusiasm in equal measure. “Cure Boy. Smart one. Eridan?”

“Hey,” he answers, and it would seem that another side effect of his insane mental illness is losing all control of his facial muscles around her, because his mouth breaks into a smile of its own volition. “Hey, Aradia.”

“Hey.” Aradia returns his beam. “Why so serious, stranger? What are you staring at?”

He gapes for a moment, still reeling from her sudden appearance. “Nothin’ really. Just thinkin’,” he mumbles. _About you. Again._ “What are you doin’ here?” he asks hurriedly before he can blurt out something he’d rather not say.

She turns away for a moment and then hefts a heavy-looking book from her bag onto her lap. It’s huge, bigger than an encyclopedia, and the leather binding is cracked, the gold leaf of the spine worn away.

“I’ve always loved this spot. I come here to read when Terezi gets too loud. She’s really fun, but sometimes she has too much energy, you know? And it’s so much prettier out here. Like a meadow in the middle of the city.”

Eridan cranes his neck to make out the title of the book. “So you come to the middle of Central Park in New York City to read about the history of archaeology of Roman Britain?”

“I like history.”

The book releases a plume of dust when she cracks the cover open. The title page is yellowed and brittle; he thinks the publication date says 1930.

“Christ, that thing’s a piece a history itself.”

“I don’t remember where I even got it,” she says, beaming. “I’m nearly done. Nobody really thinks about what Britain was like before the Romans, but they actually had a really fascinating culture. The druids had this incredible symbiotic relationship with nature, and then the Romans had to go and fuck it all up with their wonderful technology.”

“The Romans shaped the modern world,” Eridan exclaims.

Aradia shrugs. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it. I mean, it was all downhill after they invaded England.”

“Roman culture is the best culture ever invented. They were doin’ the rest a the world a _favor._ ”

She rolls her eyes. “They didn’t even make their own religion, they just stole it from the Greeks!”

“Adapted it. There’s a difference.”

“Adapted my ass.” She shuts the book again, and it coughs hundred-year-old dust in Eridan’s direction. “They just took everything and changed the names. And they didn’t even keep the best parts—they reduced Hades to a shadow of his former self! What about Charon and the River Styx? What about Orpheus and Eurydice?”

“Maybe they didn’t want Orpheus because he was depressin’ an’ whiny an’ couldn’t follow a simple set a fuckin’ directions.”

“That is a gross oversimplification! Orpheus and Eurydice are some of the most famous lovers in the entire Western Canon, and I will not have you disrespecting their memory.”

“You gotta admit it’s his own fault he lost her.”

“Maybe she liked it there,” Aradia says. “Maybe she was happier not knowing. It must have been a lot simpler. She wouldn’t even have remembered him, she crossed the Styx. Maybe she didn’t want to go back to the living world.”

“You really think forgettin’ everythin’ just for empty bliss is better than livin’?”

“Not better, maybe,” she says, “but sometimes, I bet it’s a lot easier.”

They both fall silent for a moment. Eridan’s feet are beginning to feel numb. His soles are chafing against his socks, and it’s more painful than it should be.

“She woulda been young,” he says, for lack of anything. “She woulda had so much to live for.”

“Would she, though?”

“Well a course she would. She and Orpheus probably woulda had lotsa little Greek babies and lived to a ripe old age and spend all their days goin’ to the coliseum and whatever else old Greek people did.”

“That doesn’t sound like much of a life,” Aradia muses. “No point to it, really. What’s the fun in getting old and dying slowly?”

“The fact that you’re alive?”

 “I think,” she says, “that I’d rather spontaneously combust right here, right now, than live fifty more years without any purpose to my life. I think I’d rather drink myself to death in a blaze of glory than have the drugs do it for me when I get old.”

“Guess that’s one way to look at it.”

She’s silent for a moment, pensive, lips pursed while she stares blankly out at the frozen lake. “God, it always ends up back here,” she mutters. “I’m so morbid. I’m sorry. Do you have a cigarette?”

Eridan doesn’t. He quit smoking a year ago.

“I know I shouldn’t,” she continues. “I stopped, I swear I really did, I stopped like a year ago but things are getting bad again and I’ve got to allow myself the little things, right? It’s just a cigarette.”

“Those’ll kill you,” he says automatically.

Aradia snorts. “You say that like you think I don’t know it.”

He drags the toes of his boots through the slushy puddle underneath the bench and looks down. His face is reflected muddily in the dim water. It is not the face of a person who intends to burn out bright. It is the face of a man who will work himself into obscurity by sixty-five, retire to Florida on his 401K and leave absolutely no legacy whatsoever. It’s the future he’d already resigned himself to, no matter if he wanted it or not.

And, he thinks, he doesn’t really want it. Not any of it.

So he says “Hey, can I have your number?”

For once, Aradia is the one who looks taken aback, and Eridan nearly laughs at how the roles have been reversed. “Why?” she asks, definitely wary.

“I think I’d rather be Eurydice than Orpheus,” he says simply.

She seems to understand, and suddenly Eridan misses her, is caught up in a wave of longing that he can’t find the source of. Aradia opens her book again and pulls a pen out of her jacket, scribbling a series of numbers on the flyleaf in big, messy handwriting. “Text me,” she says, and tears it out of the binding, folds it into quarters, and presses it into the palm of his hand. “I like talking to you.”

Eridan is so busy barely believing that he actually fucking got it that he doesn’t get the chance to say goodbye when she walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank the new year for reminding me to finally haul my ass back into gear on this story. it's too important to me to let it die. maybe thank the college in nyc that i got accepted to a little, too, cause that's inspiring most of this chapter.


	7. chapter 6

_and it's beginning to get to me  
_ _that i know more of the stars and sea  
_ _than i do of what's in your head_

chapter 6

_“Morning, sleepyhead.”_

_There are cold fingers dancing over his chest, cold and soft and teasing. Eridan stifles a chuckle. “Stop it.”_

_“No,” Aradia says playfully. She leans up to press a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “Come on. Get up. The day’s practically gone already.”_

_Eridan pretends to think about it. “No,” he says finally._

_Aradia’s fingers sneak farther up his bare chest, ghosting over his skin, and then veer to the sides. Eridan collapses into convulsive fits of laughter. “Not—_ fair, _” he gasps out. “Ar, stop!”_

_“Get up, get up,” she chants, and there are smiles in her voice, smiles and sunbeams and October leaves, and Eridan loves._

_He flips them over, hovering over Aradia on the mattress, and she lets her arms drop. “Looks like I win,” he smirks, and drops a kiss to her mouth. Then he lingers, because he’s kissing her now, and he’s never been good at ending kisses with Aradia when he sees no point to._

_“Never,” Aradia says into his mouth, and he can feel her grin pressed up against his own._

And then the stupid fucking alarm clock starts blaring, and Eridan really wishes his dreams didn’t cut off at the most inopportune places.

“Okay, okay,” he mutters to the wailing machine, and slaps it off with the back of his hand and rolls over. His face squashes up against his phone. Right, yeah, he must have fallen asleep while he was texting Aradia last night—shit. He fell asleep on her.

Eridan turns it on to find he’s got three missed texts from her. The first says _i cant believe you actually like that movie unironically. thats actually kind of cute in a hilarious way._ The second is _ok ok its still shitty and predictable but i promise i wont judge you for it dont get all broken hearted._ The third is _goodnight eridan. sweet dreams_

Oh, Eridan thinks, and then _oh,_ this is okay too, because maybe he hadn’t woken up with Aradia in his bed, but he’d still woken up to her, and it’s nearly as good to him. And _sweet dreams_ —oh, god, he’s a little bit in love. More than a little bit.

 _sorry,_ he texts back, _sorry i fell asleep yeah long week. least its thursday. its a good movie dont even hate._

He presses send, thinks again, and then adds _they were sweet. yours?_

She doesn’t text him back again until mid-morning, when he’s holed up in his office with his omnipresent cup of coffee and equally pervasive stacks of reports to read. Eridan doesn’t know if it’s a sign of his boredom or his neediness that he immediately drops all his work to pick up his phone.

_thursdays are nice. i like the way they sound. prefer wednesdays though. you crack me up and so does that movie. sweet enough._

Eridan spends the next fifteen minutes typing, erasing and re-typing until his thumbs cramp up from the miniscule keyboard, and when his sight has gone cross-eyed and blurry from staring at the same message for too long, he finally presses send. He barely gets any more work done for the rest of the morning. His thoughts scattered like dice the second her name lit up on the screen, and he can’t say that he really cares.

He feels lighter than he has in months, maybe years. He feels like things are finally beginning to make sense. The memories don’t even bother him anymore—in fact, he yearns for them, stockpiles them and thinks about them late at night, alone in bed, drawing graphite lines between the fragments, trying to connect them into a web with Aradia in the middle, a grinning, fangless spider with the biggest brown eyes he’s ever seen.

She couldn’t be more perfect if he had invented her himself—well, aside from the boyfriend and the unpredictable mood swings. But she likes post-punk bands and _Lost in Translation_ and black coffee and the American Museum of Natural History and his favorite bookstore on Essex Street, and she’s incredibly _full_ somehow, like she’s more real than the rest of the world around her. More colorful, more vivid, more tangible. How ironic, since he’s spent so long chasing her through his ephemeral thoughts.

Nepeta tells him that he’s changed over the past week. He’s happier now, she’s noticed, or at the very least he looks and sounds it. Nepeta says he should always smile like he has been recently, because it makes him look younger and kinder, and Eridan pretends to laugh it off but he takes it to heart because truthfully, he _feels_ younger and kinder, too. It’s easy to forget Aradia has a boyfriend. It’s easy to forget he has no idea where the memories are coming from. It’s so, so easy to forget she doesn’t know everything that he does, and that she doesn’t even feel one-tenth of what he feels about her. It’s dangerously easy to pretend that they are mutually falling in love, and that Eridan isn’t the one doing all the work for both of them.

He spends his lunch break texting her from the café at the bottom of the office building, and spends a good deal of the afternoon wishing she would text him back, because it seems the only time she responds in a timely manner is around two o’clock in the morning, when she gets ridiculously introspective and likes to discuss the meaning of life with him. Eridan’s been losing sleep because of it, but he can’t bring himself to care. Sleep is wasted time. He wants to live like her—to spend every moment becoming more colorful, having experiences and conversations that will stay with him into old age. He’s tired of his job; he’s tired of his boring, routine existence.

Aradia’s either going to save his life or destroy it.

Towards the end of the day, when the light outside his plate-glass window is fading, Eridan is forced to face the fact that he has an important meeting the next day and he actually has work that needs to be done, and he is horribly behind schedule and despite how newly liberated from his mortal coils he is, he still does not want to lose his job at any cost. He has to lock his phone inside Nepeta’s desk and order her not to let him see it for a full hour while he outlines his stupid fucking presentation; it’s at least seventy percent bullshit, but his boss loves Eridan, so he’s not too worried. Lofty business positions in this company usually involve talking bullshit about seventy percent of the time anyway. It’s late when he goes home, and dark enough that the lights from the buildings lining the streets give off cold fluorescent glows like artificial stars in the night sky. The temperature plummeted again—he can see his breath blossoming in front of his face like cigarette smoke used to, but he’s not annoyed, he doesn’t even feel the chill, really. He takes the subway home instead of his usual taxi and watches the people on the train, wonders which ones Aradia would find interesting, wonders about each person’s story. He writes paragraphs in his heads while he waits for his stop. They’re all stilted, over-the-top, but he’s not a natural poet. He’s never had need to be. He texts Aradia about it— _saww this girl on the metro readin sappho an she reminded me of you not really sure wwhy_ —and she texts him back when he’s unlocking his front door with cold, fumbling fingers. _yeah? am i supposed to be flattered?_

Eridan grins to himself and doesn’t go for the alcohol cabinet. He stays up until four a.m., stone cold sober, with Morrissey in his record player and his phone screen glowing in the dark.

The next night, after his presentation goes spectacularly like he knew it would even though he had barely four hours of sleep and his boss has congratulated him heartily and Vriska has given him her grudging, sneering admiration, he decides to go out.

“You want _what?_ ” Karkat asks, disbelieving.

Eridan shrugs, though Karkat can’t see it through the phone. “Let’s go somewhere,” he suggests. “You an’ me. Let’s go to that music club you like.”

“Why?”

“Jesus, Kar, I need a reason to wanna go to a concert once in a while?”

“Well I’m fucking sorry, asswad, but this is the first time in _three fucking months_ that you’ve even expressed the desire to go anywhere besides your fucking smelly bed! I’m a little confused, okay?”

Hm. Eridan hadn’t thought about that. Come to think about it, he’s not sure if he’s even initiated any kind of social activity himself in the past two years.

“New leaf,” he says shortly.

Karkat chuckles darkly. “New motherfucking forest, more like.”

They go out. Karkat’s favorite club is a bit of a dive, small and dark and with only the cheapest beers on tap, but it’s full and the clientele is energetic and happy and whatever, as long as they’ve got alcohol and loud music. Jade’s got a night class tonight, which Karkat says is good because she doesn’t like this place too much; Eridan can’t imagine Jade, kind little Jade, here in this dark smoky hole at all.

Karkat gets a beer; Eridan gets two shots of vodka, and then two more. Karkat frowns at him and sips his drink protectively; Eridan throws his back with reckless abandon like a teenage virgin at a house party. It’s not even good alcohol, really; the liquor is cheap and sour, like choking down vinegar, but by the third one, Eridan can’t even tell. Karkat begins to say something, but then the band comes on, and whatever he was going to say is lost to the swell of screams rolling back from the pit in front of the stage.

While they play the first song, old cravings begin to hit Eridan again, ones he’d nearly forgotten about. He hasn’t wanted a cigarette in months; as far as quitting went, he’d never relapsed, and he’d never really wanted to. But the smoke in the club is so thick that he can practically taste it, feel the dense weight of it on his tongue, and suddenly, he wants his old cancer stick back. He’s half-tempted to try and bum one off the bartender, except it’s a burly guy with every inch of his arms tattooed looking like he belongs on the back of a Harley Davidson and Eridan doesn’t really want to talk to him unless he absolutely has to.

He turns to Karkat. “Do you got a cig?”

Karkat’s eyes widen, the whites getting huge and luminous in the dark. A storm cloud passes over his face.

“I need to smoke,” Eridan explains.

In a fluid motion, Karkat jumps off his bar stool and grabs hold of Eridan’s elbow, jerking him towards the door. Eridan’s drunker than he thought he was—the beat of the bass is pounding in his chest, putting his balance off, and his head is spinning; he’s not sure if he’s dizzy or if the club really is rotating around him. Karkat gets him out into the cold night air, which clears his mind a little, and then slaps him clean across the cheek, which clears it a lot more and also hurts a whole hell of a lot.

“Ow,” Eridan says, but Karkat is already yelling.

“What has gotten _into_ you? You fucking quit a year ago! You said those fucking things were killing you, said you were never going back to them— you promised me, promised Jade—what is _happening_ to you, motherfuc— _Eridan_?”

“Jesus, Kar, it’s just a cig—“ Eridan hiccups and then stumbles back against the wall. “Cigarette,” he finishes lamely.

“And this drinking! Fucking Christ, are you _trying_ to implode your liver before you turn thirty? Because I’m sure as shit not gonna give you mine for the transplant, okay? There is something very fucking _wrong_ , Eridan, and you need to snap out of it, and I am telling you this because you are my _best goddamn friend_ and I motherfucking _care about you!_ ”

“It’s not—gon’ be okay—“

“It’s Aradia,” Karkat says quietly. Eridan’s pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to hear it. “Oh god, it’s Aradia. Of course it is.”

“How do you know?” Eridan says suspiciously. He’s slurring like a maniac—he never slurs when he’s drunk, _ugh._

Karkat grits his teeth, his eyebrows knitted up together over the bridge of his nose, and he looks legitimately angry. “I _fucking told you_ that it would be a bad idea,” he mutters, and begins pacing back and forth on the sidewalk. “But did you listen? No, of course not! You’re _Eridan fucking Ampora,_ you only care about yourself, and not even your own fucking body, just your goddamned feelings, that’s how self-centered you are. Oh god, I’m such a bad friend.”

Eridan isn’t sure if he’s missing something or if he’s just that fucking smashed.

“Don’t talk to her,” he says, wheeling around to face Eridan again. “There’s shit you don’t know, Eridan—shit I can’t tell you, shit nobody can—but it’s gonna be better for everyone if you don’t talk to her. Better for you, better for me, better for _her._ ”

“Can’t,” Eridan says.

“Of course you fucking can.”

“No,” he says. “Can’t stop now. I’ve almost got it.”

“Almost got _what_? _What_ is so important that it’s worth giving up your health and sobriety and motherfucking _sanity_ for?”

“Dunno,” Eridan tells him. “But m’about to find out.”

They don’t go back into the club, and Eridan never gets his cigarette. Karkat hails him a taxi and bundles him into the back, slips the cabbie a twenty, and tells him Eridan’s home address. “Nowhere else,” he says. “Get the bastard home. He’s out of his mind.”

It’s cold inside the cab; the air conditioning is blowing full force, even though there’s still slushy February snow on the ground outside, and Eridan tucks his fingers between his thighs, trying to coax heat back into them. He can feel the beginnings of a headache forming behind the bridge of his nose, and the rocking of the taxi over the rough New York City streets is making him nauseous. Christ, did he really drink that much? He’s not a lightweight; he always holds his liquor. He hasn’t drunk-puked since college.

Then his phone vibrates in the pocket of his jeans when the cab is pulling up to the curb in front of his apartment building, and Karkat’s words roll through his mind: _there’s shit you don’t know—shit I can’t tell you, shit nobody can._

“Thanks,” he says hurriedly, and stumbles upstairs just in time to lose five shots and half a bag of potato chips into his toilet.

What Aradia’s text says is _where do you think people go when they die?_

Oh, okay, so it’s late enough at night that she’s reached the point where she asks philosophic questions that Eridan can barely even wrap his head around. _wwhy?_ he asks, and then strips out of his smoke-scented t-shirt and jeans and into flannel pants.

Quicker than normal, she responds _you dont want to know?_

“Ugh.” Eridan closes his eyes and falls back into the pillow. The headache is bursting inside his skull now; a million pinpricks of pain are hammering away at bone behind his eyes, fireworks bursting in the space between his brain and forehead. His vision is swimming.

 _its to late fpor tis shit,_ he texts.

_yeah guess youre tired hm_

She sounds condescending, even through the phone. Eridan wonders how five words can convey such disdain. _im druink,_ he tells her.

_i can tell_

He falls asleep without texting her back. Aradia’s face doesn’t star in his dreams that night. Nothing does.

He’s got a hangover like hell the next morning, of course. He can’t even think for the better part of the day—he wakes up at eleven and can’t find the will to get his ass out of bed until one-thirty, and even then, it’s only to choke down two glasses of water and a handful of Ibuprofen. Nobody texts him—not Karkat, not Aradia, not even Nepeta. It’s safe to say that his good mood of the days previous is completely fucking evaporated. Eridan watches bad reality TV from his couch for the rest of the day, chugging black coffee and feeling very sorry for himself.

It’s only later at night, when he’s hauled his ass off of the couch to order pizza for dinner and refill his coffee cup for the millionth time, that he remembers the reason Karkat hasn’t texted him yet. It wasn’t even really a fight, he thinks; Karkat definitely wasn’t as angry as Eridan knows he could’ve been, or if he was, he didn’t show it. But what he said about Aradia—how he sounded almost like he was familiar with her, like he’d known her and specifically things about her in relation to him, and not good things, either—that part was distressing. Eridan isn’t sure he can even talk to Karkat right now. He’s back to square fucking one—alienated all his friends, hungover out of his skull, and not a single fucking step closer to finding out who Aradia really is.

There’s only one thing to do, really, Eridan thinks, no matter how little he actually wants to do it.

He picks up his phone. _so wwhats the deal wwith your boyfriend?_

She texts back with uncharacteristic rapidity. Eridan only has to spend fifteen minutes regretting the message wholeheartedly and wishing he wasn’t so fucking stupid. _sollux? what about him?_

_howwd you guys meet?_

Eridan really, really does not want to know. He doesn’t want to know _anything_ about the dickface unless it’s something compromising enough to shock Aradia (which would have to be extremely compromising; as far as he can tell, Aradia does not get shocked, period.)  But he’s like a mosquito bite—constantly irritable, too much so to ignore, so Eridan’s going to deal with it quick and get it out of the way so he can forget how uncomfortable he feels whenever Aradia brings up the fact that she’s with someone else.

 _recently,_ she answers. _weve only been together like a month. i think he thinks its more serious than it is. hes very good with computers and he can make me laugh and hes a friend of terezis._

A month. Okay.

_so you like him?_

_yeah hes interesting. i like talking to him._

Suddenly, he feels nauseous, and his fingers hover uselessly because how does he respond to that without sounding bitter or angry or uselessly and irrationally jealous? But a moment later, his phone vibrates again and another message pops up.

_hes clingy though. i barely know him and already he wants to do everything together. i think he likes me more than i like him._

Eridan really, really should not feel this relieved.

 _that’s harsh,_ he types. _sucks. i’m sorry._

_hes too bitter for me anyway. it probably wont last very long_

There may or may not be a shit-eating grin on his face. Aradia texts _why are you asking?_

His thumbs falter on the keyboard. The doorbell rings, and he jumps. _curious i guess,_ he writes. _this is wwhat friends do right? talk to each other about their livves yeah?_

Eridan gets his pizza from the zitty teenage boy at the door. When he returns to the couch, his apartment full of the scent of grease and sausage, Aradia has answered _so were friends?_

He thinks he’s probably blushing. He knows that he’s angry at himself, because he’s pathetic, he really is. A moment later, another message bubbles up on the screen: _relax im joking. of course we are. youre interesting to talk to too._

Alright, he can breathe again. Eridan slumps back into the pillows and turns off the TV, then gets himself a beer before he texts her back. _interestin yeah? i dont get that much_

_i think you are._

Interesting. He can live with interesting. He can work with it.

He dreams about her again that night for the first time in a while. It’s a simple memory, a little faded, washed out like it’s fainter than usual. They’re walking down a street, hand-in-hand, just talking, but he can’t hear what they’re saying, it’s staticky like a radio not tuned right. She doesn’t look happy. He looks pained, eyebrows drawn together in a familiar expression, and then she stops to shout at him, wheeling around on the middle of the street and throwing her hands into the air, and he catches a couple words.

“ _Stop._ Stop talking like that. I don’t want to hear it—“

They make his blood run cold, and his dream self starts shouting too, cursing at her, telling her to be reasonable—it’s painful to watch, and the static reaches a crescendo pitch—

Eridan wakes up in a cold sweat. His sheets are tangled around his legs, and his heart is beating in his eardrums, behind his eyes. He thinks—he’s fucking sure—that he wasn’t supposed to remember that; that there’s a reason he hasn’t seen this side of them before, that the memories have been happy, that he hasn’t been telling himself the whole story. He doesn’t want to know it.

He checks the time on his phone. It’s three-fucking-thirty in the morning, and the city is all asleep, no lights, no traffic, nothing. There’s a text from Aradia. Eridan doesn’t open it.

He spends an eternity staring at the backs of his eyelids and drowning inside his own head. There are words echoing, reflecting off his skull— _shit I can’t tell you, shit nobody can—your_ girlfriend, _what’s her name—you’re not supposed to be talking to him—_ and there’s the beginnings of an idea there, of an explanation, but it’s four am and he can’t even begin to consider it. He wishes he’d never heard of Aradia. He wishes Sollux didn’t exist, he wishes _he_ didn’t exist, he wishes he had a drink.

“My name is Eridan Ampora,” he whispers to himself, “an’ I am in love with a memory.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and on that uplifting note, happy valentine's day! <3


End file.
